


Watertown

by queer_cheer



Series: The Adventures of River Song [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), The Diary of River Song (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Dark, Fear, Hallucinations, Horror, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Illness, Mild Gore, Mind Links, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Nightmares, PTSD, Religious Cults, Sexism, Stormcage Containment Facility, Telepathy, Therapy, Time Lord telepathy skills, Uncanny Valley, Vulnerable Doctor, Vulnerable River, alien life forms, brief mention of upsetting/traumatic prison conditions:, but it'll be fixed i've got a plan, discussion about mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 46,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23085628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queer_cheer/pseuds/queer_cheer
Summary: Locked behind the barred windows of Stormcage Containment Facility, River Song has been having nightmares; a strange old woman haunting her dreams forces her to make increasingly difficult decisions, and punishes her if she fails. But when she and the Doctor awake to find that they've been plucked away from their separate lives and placed on a bus neither can remember boarding, they may learn that not all nightmares vanish in the morning.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/River Song
Series: The Adventures of River Song [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582024
Comments: 110
Kudos: 57





	1. A Burnt Child Loves the Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! My uni is on break, and so I'm back to bother you lot with more self-indulgent River Song stories. As always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated!!

Stormcage Containment Facility had a lot of rules, even for a prison. 

There were the standard bits, of course, like when you had to be in your cell, when you had to leave it, when you got to eat, where you got to shower, and what you could and couldn’t have; no books were allowed, and smuggling one in was punishable by up to a week in solitary confinement. River had gotten three days for her copy of The Great Gatsby -- and an additional ten for the rare Neptunian cigars hidden in its hollowed-out pages. But the joke was on them; she rather liked her privacy.

As far as rules went, she’d anticipated most of them, more or less. Prison was really just secondary school for naughty adults who weren’t so keen on learning maths. But there was something else, something that she hadn’t thought of: every inmate was mandated to see a therapist once, twice, or three times a week, depending on how they scored on a psychiatric evaluation upon entry into the prison. 

River had balled up her paper assessment and swallowed it up just to see what the guards would do, figuring it was just a formality. And so it came as no surprise that she’d gotten stuck in the latter category with the likes of Hatchet Harry, who had served in some war near Triangulum and killed an entire fleet of soldiers with a single axe. He’d insist that it was, in fact, an axe, not a hatchet -- that kind of thing mattered in the intergalactic courts -- but Axe Harry just didn’t have the same fun ring to it.

All things aside, therapy sounded like a dreadful bore. Some doctor telling her she wasn’t crazy, just _sad_ , or _hurting_ , or _lonely_? She could’ve retched. If she wanted that, all she had to do was talk to her husband. (And she would, come nightfall.) But as far as she saw it, she didn’t need some stranger telling her what was right about her head and what was wrong with it.

At least, that’s what she’d thought before meeting Dr. Luna Akinjide-Okereke, the first person in Stormcage she didn’t immediately want to choke -- at least, not for the sake of hurting her.

Luna was one of the ten councillors employed by the prison. She’d been the first girl born on Earth’s moon; there was something about how atmospheric conditions or whatever favoured male babies, but Luna had made history, and the name she was given would forever be a reminder of where she came from. She bore the burden of perpetual importance, a name that wasn’t just a name, but a legacy.

She and River had got on just fine.

River was being escorted into the psychiatric wing in handcuffs, flanked by two armed guards who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else with anyone else.

“Really, boys,” she said to them, sounding pleasant. “You act like I could kill you just by giving you the wrong look. And tell me, how could a sweet old face like mine hurt anyone?”

“You have a record, Miss Song,” gruffed one of them. “We’re instructed to take the proper precautions.”

Those precautions included but were not limited to: no lipstick (the Governor hadn’t yet found out how to tell which was hallucinogenic and which was not until he found guards blubbering in the corner and sucking their thumbs), no hair tools (picking locks was child’s play when she had a sonic brush, and even when she didn’t, she could work wonders with a fine-toothed comb), and no nail polish; River had invented a serum that was not only the brightest red on the market, but it was an effective paralytic, too, and because of its extract from the rare Bobolo tree in the Isop Galaxy, it was only effective against men. 

She had been particularly proud of that bit, and had every intention of bringing it to the markets of Tiaanamat at the earliest possible convenience. She’d make a fortune selling to daft and unsuspecting old men in search of pretty gifts for their little ladies, who would buy their wives something pretty and cosmetic but never anything defensive. Oh, how little they knew…

“Is something amusing, Miss Song?” the guard paused. River hadn't realised she'd been smiling.

“No. And it's Professor Song,” River corrected, only half-aware of the way the his meaty hands tightened around her upper arm. Respect was as rare in prison as filet mignon or caviar, if not harder to come by. River laid it on thick in the hopes that someone might toss her a morsel of esteem in return. “Call me that, if you wouldn’t mind. Or Dr. Song. I don’t prefer one over the other.” 

“ _Miss_ Song,” said the second guard, almost cruelly. “Dr. Akinjide-Okereke will see you. You have one hour before you’ll be retrieved.” 

“If looks could kill,” River huffed. “You’d all be part of my criminal repertoire. Precautions be damned.” 

Two layers of metal sliding doors slipped open, and the first guard gave River a rough shove inside. Behind her, three sheets of solid metal walls shut and locked. 

Luna had her cherry red stilettos propped up on her desk as she poured two glasses of wine. 

River laughed. “Oh, this is breaking the rules!” 

“Oi, which one of us in prison for murder, dear?” Luna looked up and grinned. “The tricky thing about rules was knowing when to break them. Come on and have a seat. We’ll get those handcuffs off of you.” 

“Thank goodness,” River rubbed away the soreness as Luna freed her wrists. “I swear, those guards shackle me in tighter every day.” 

“They’re still giving you trouble?” 

“Only sometimes. I think I’ve sent them a very clear message.” 

“Ah, yes,” Luna smiled fondly. “I did hear about Officer Hamm. Medics weren’t sure if they’d be able to reattach his finger after all.” 

“Yeah? Well maybe from here on out, he’ll think twice before he touches a girl’s bum without buying her dinner first.” 

“You’re my favourite patient for a very good reason,” Luna passed her a drink.

“What’ve we got this week?” River lit up at the sight of the cup. “Riesling? Rose? Chardonnay?” 

“I thought we’d mix it up a bit with a humble sauvignon blanc,” Luna beamed. “A little birdy told me it’s your favourite.” 

River took a delighted sip and laughed. “Oh, brilliant! It certainly is! How’d you know!?” 

Luna winked. “Spoilers.” 

River laughed. “Clever. You know, this could mean only one of two things, Luna.” 

“And those things are...?” 

“Either you’re trying to court me -- and you know perfectly well I’m a happily married woman -- or you're just trying to butter me up so I tell you my tragic backstory. Crocodile tears, and all.” 

“Ah, clever. I guess my grand romantic gestures can’t live up to the Doctor,” Luna teased, taking a sip of wine.

In retrospect, River wasn’t quite sure if Luna believed the Doctor was real or not; either she -- a woman of science and medicine -- found it perfectly plausible that a man in a blue time-traveling telephone box broke into the prison every night and swept River off her feet, or she thought she was properly mad and simply humored her probable psychosis. Either way, River never declined free wine.

“What was it last time?” Luna asked. “Was it the...the trip to the Bluewood Forest? If I remember correctly, you fought off a genocidal maniac.” 

“Memory serves you right,” River sipped her drink and winked.

“You know, there’s always the same element of danger when you’re with the Doctor, isn’t there?” Luna leaned forward. “In all of your stories, you could’ve died.”

River laughed. “You could die crossing the street at the wrong time, or eating the fish sticks in the cafeteria here. Life’s far too fleeting -- and boring -- to give yourself a bellyache at the thought of dying. And besides, nothing so small as a man with a power complex would strike me dead. When I go, I’m going out with a bang.”

“Ah, the facade,” Luna’s smile softened.

“What?” 

“The bad girl persona. The fearless heroine. The femme fatale. Layers of protective mental clothing, dear, all guarding the frightened child huddled deep inside.”

River’s smile strained. Things had gotten a little too real a little too fast. “Oh, be reasonable. What, you think I chase danger for the adrenaline rush?”

“Well, you certainly wouldn’t be the first,” Luna leaned back, crossing her arms. She looked over at her bookshelf, and then back at River. “Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde that said ‘a burnt child loves fire?’” 

River laughed, but it was more of a sound of warning than one of joy. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“The guards here want me to tell them you’re psychotic, but you and I both know that you aren’t,” Luna told her, her cherry-red lips curling into a crescent smile. “It’s common, you know. Acting out. Especially among adults who never really got to be children. Something so fundamental was taken from you, and no one ever gave you a very good reason why. Why it had to be you. Why it couldn’t have been someone -- anyone -- else,” Luna studied River’s sudden stone-faced expression with a mix of sympathy and understanding. “All that rage and all that sadness and all that inability to understand why...it has to go somewhere, River, doesn’t it?” 

Something stirred in River’s chest. It was the kind of tight anxiety that usually turned itself into rage, because anger was far more constructive -- and destructive -- a feeling than sadness ever could be. 

“My childhood was fine, thank you,” River managed an icy smile. 

If that was true, River’s definition of _fine_ would’ve also classified the Cuban Missile Crisis as a “just a bit of row,” or the Second World War as a “pretty rough few months.” It was as far from fine as the centre of the Earth was from the cosmos. River knew it and Luna knew it, and River knew that Luna was no fool. 

She studied River’s hardened expression with one to match, and then took a deep breath.

“Did you ever have a birthday party, Professor?” 

River crossed her arms. 

“Did you ever have a doll? Or a toy truck? Or a colouring book?” 

“I don’t see how--” 

“Did you ever go to a park, play on swings, or on a slide?”

Something about the pointed way Luna asked her questions led River to believe she somehow already knew the answers.

“This is just another example of how the prison system is made to torture its inmates,” Jaw set, River stood up, but upon realising she didn’t have anywhere better to go, she sat herself right back down and eyed the floor as if it had personally wronged her. “They starve you, and then they feed you sludge. They turn off the heat and punish you if you ask for a blanket. She fills your head with nightmares and hits you if you cry.” 

“She?” 

River’s stare flickered to Luna. “What?” 

“You said _she_.” 

“They. I meant they. The guards. Can I have more wine?” River downed the rest of her glass in one sip and slammed it on the desk. After a moment’s hesitation, Luna poured her a refill.

“It’s alright to get upset in these meetings. Most people do. And you’ve been through a lot. If it gets to you sometimes...that doesn’t make you mad. In fact, I’d be more worried if it never got to you. If it never made you upset. That would be far more insane.” 

“Everyone’s been through a lot. That’s life. Life isn’t fair. Life is just a lot.” River took a breath. Her chest was starting to feel just a little bit too tight. “I’ve managed my whole life without talking about things. I’ve barely just started talking about things with the Doctor, and he’s seen me naked, so I fear you’re just a good bit behind, my friend.” 

“Using humour to mask pain,” Luna spoke the words she was jotting down on her yellow memo pad, articulating her point with a loud dot over the I. 

“Oi, stop writing stuff down! That’s not fair!”

“I thought life wasn’t fair?” 

River pouted. “And you’re wrong, by the way.” 

“Oh?” 

“I am mad. Bloody insane, me. Ask anyone here, and they’ll tell you.” 

“Well, I think they’re wrong.” 

“Why?”

“Because,” Luna leaned forward, hands crossed. “I’ve treated men who ate other men because they liked the way blood makes them belch. I once had a patient that thought she was a spaceship and wanted me to remove the little people from inside of her -- come to find, she’d been eating toy soldiers.” 

A smile flickered across River’s face, and Luna knew she was onto something.

“You think you’ve got the same mental status as those people, Dr. Song?” 

“I think I’m probably more fun at parties, at the very least.” 

Luna chuckled. “Well, we’ve established that you’re a not-psychopath with childhood trauma. Shall we address the nightmares yet?” 

“Oh, I don’t think so,” River sighed tiredly. “Haven’t we had enough intense talk for one day? Tell me about your love life, or what you wanted to be when you grew up, or what you do when you aren’t counseling hopeless jailbirds.” 

“I’m not interesting in the least,” Luna flipped through her notes from past sessions. “We could talk about Kovarian?” 

River huffed. “Because that conversation went so well last time!” 

“I told you, it’s normal to cry!”

“And I told you; I wasn’t crying. I was just having an allergic reaction to your frankly over-the-top perfume.” 

“My wife bought me that perfume.” 

“She’s got bad taste.” 

“So, nightmares or Kovarian? Your choice, dear.” 

River crossed her arms and huffed. She liked Luna. She was a perfectly good and sensible person, with a quick wit and a sharp tongue. There weren’t many people in Stormcage that would call her _professor_. In fact, most people tended to call her _bitch_. Luna was, in many ways, a lot like River herself, and that little detail made River realise just how insufferable she could be. Bless the Doctor’s heart for putting up with it. 

“Fine,” she conceded. “Nightmares. At least they were never real.” 

“Good,” praised Luna. 

“What do you want to know?” 

“Have they continued?” 

“Of course they’ve continued,” River muttered. “You think I like having these bags under my eyes? That it’s some grunge fashion choice to match my tongue-in-a-power-socket hair?” 

“Have they gotten worse, then?” 

“They’ve just gotten so strange,” River looked down at her drink and gave it a swirl, watching the whirlpool as it spun. “It’s always the same. I’m in a room with two other people and a gun. I know I’m meant to decide which one lives and which one dies, but it’s never an obvious choice, you know? No murderers, no perpetrators of worldly horrors. Just two perfectly ordinary people who want to live -- and who beg me to let them. Sometimes, they’re strangers. Sometimes they’re people I know. People I love.” 

Luna had set her notebook down. Instead, she was listening intently. 

“And is the woman still there?” 

River swallowed. After a moment, she nodded.

“She’s always there, and she never speaks, but she just...stares at me. She’s older than anyone I’ve ever seen before -- it’s like she’s always been around. An old God,” River fiddled absently with the arm of her chair. “I don’t know what that means, old God. It just comes to me when I think of her. She’s got this long, matted white hair, and she’s missing her eyes but I can feel her looking at me anyhow. And as if that isn’t enough, I know that if I don’t choose, she’ll destroy an entire planet of people just to punish my indecision. Thousands of people would burn because of my indirect actions, or one innocent person will die by my own hand. Logically, it should be an easy choice. But why is it so difficult? Why do I always wake up in a cold sweat feeling like I can’t breathe?” 

Most recently, she had to choose between her mother and her father -- Amy and Rory. That one was different; they were both begging her to let the other live, rather than begging for their own lives. And she knew that whichever she chose wouldn’t matter, because killing one of them was the same as killing them both. 

In that particular version of the nightmare, she couldn’t choose in time, and the old, watchful woman had burned the planet below. The stench of rotting flesh had darkened the air, and as River stood amid the rubble and dust, Amy, Rory, and the Doctor had stood across from her. They called her a monster. They said she was weak. They told her it was her fault. And it was.

She didn’t feel like telling Luna that bit. She was too ashamed, which was strange. It didn’t make much sense, but life and nightmares rarely ever did. 

“It isn’t the woman you’re afraid of,” Luna theorised. “You have you ask yourself why she’s there. What does she represent?” 

“You’re the psychiatrist,” River griped. “You tell me.” 

“You’re the psychopath,” Luna countered with a tease. “What about a timeless old lady gives you the willies?”

“I don’t know,” River said. “I don’t think I’m afraid of making decisions. In fact, I’m pretty good at it. Thinking on the fly, I mean. Reasoning rationally.”

“Acting morally,” Luna added.

River rolled her eyes. “I’m in prison for murder, Dr. Akinjide-Okereke.” 

“A murder you only half-remember, that wasn’t your fault. You can be moral.” 

“Maybe rarely, on accident.”

It was all part of the facade, Luna thought. “But sometimes, there’s no moral answer to a question, if that question is, itself, immoral. You can’t be blamed for choosing wrong when there’s no right choice. If someone gave you a multiple choice question for two plus two, and the answers were three, eight, and five, what would you pick?” 

River was quiet. 

“Odds are, you wouldn’t pick any of them, because you know they’re all wrong. You’d forge your own answer, because in your head and in your heart, you know what’s right,” Luna smiled at the way River rolled her eyes like an impertinent teenager who was secretly taking everything Luna said to heart, but was too cool to let it show. “In your next dream, River, try that; try paving your own path, because you don’t have to stick to anything that’s been predetermined for you. Alright?” 

“Alright,” River conceded icily, careful not to let it show just how much Luna’s words meant to her.

“Good girl.

Luna was talking again, but River was finding it harder to listen; she was starting to feel a little sick to her stomach. She usually felt nauseous when she talked about the things that haunted her. There was a guilt attached to her vulnerability, and an anxiety attached to her guilt. She’d much rather bottle it all up inside and let it fester until she had no choice but to lance it and let it all out at once -- usually, smashing things did the trick. 

But this was a different kind of sick, a confused and dizzy nausea, like someone had taken her brain it put it underwater and then pulled out her stomach, doused it in petrol, and put it back in the wrong place. Her cheeks flushed warm -- a match lit beneath her skin, but a clammy chill cooled her brow. 

Luna went on about dream analysis, about all the different things that her nightmares could say about her depression, her anxiety, her trauma, her guilt, but her words got lost in the widening expanse between them.

She meant to say, “Luna, I do hate to interrupt you, because I’m sure what you’re saying is very good, but I’m suddenly not feeling quite so well.” But what came out was a muffled groan and a slurred string of curse words as she tried to stand but found she couldn’t; her legs were jelly and her arms had gone numb.

She was going to faint.

That realisation was the last one she had before she felt her knees hit the floor and the corners of her vision went white. She felt a dull pain as her forehead smacked against the corner of the desk, and a sticky warmth as blood pooled around the wound.

She was vaguely aware of Luna’s chair clattering backward as she rushed to her side, and its crash echoed like gunshots through her fading consciousness. It was the last sound she heard before an oncoming darkness swallowed her whole.


	2. Welcome to Watertown

Motion.

Slow and steady. Smooth enough to lull a troubled mind to sleep, but bumpy enough to make it stir. 

River woke up. Sunlight streamed in through the window she’d had her head pressed against. No...that couldn’t be right! Stormcage was on a prison planet ravaged by a permanent storm ten times the size of Jupiter’s bleary red eye. But out the window, there were rolling fields of tall grass, yellowed by the season’s change. It bowed to the wind, and tree branches with orange leaves swayed and rocked and creaked as they flew by. 

Flew by? 

Dazed, River looked around, trying (and failing) to piece together enough bits of information to get a sense of where she was. Uncomfortable seats, no belts, a metal roof; enough of the jerky motion to give her stomach a lurch...she was on a bus, she deduced. 

Beside her, the Doctor was snoring. 

Her hearts skipped a beat. 

“Hey!” She grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. “Doctor! Wake up. Oi, come on. Where are we!?” 

“Five more minutes, sweetie,” the Doctor groaned, shifting and stretching. In a fit of frightened rage, River punched his shoulder with every bit of strength she could muster -- and she was quite strong. 

“Ow!” he jolted up, hand clasping over the sore spot. “You’re so violent!” 

“Where are we!?” 

The Doctor glanced around, too. Mild annoyance turned to deep-seated confusion. 

“Is this a bus?” 

“You didn’t get us here?” 

“I certainly did not!” he seemed offended at the accusation. “I hate busses. Would’ve picked a train, if this was my doing. Love a train.” 

He looked at River, tilting her chin up and examining something on her forehead. 

“What’s that frown for?” she asked him.

“You’ve got a cut on your head. Does it hurt?” 

Only then was she aware of the soft throb, punctuated by a sharp pain as the Doctor pressed a little too hard in the wrong spot. 

“Yeah, when you go poking at it!” she hissed, swatting his hand away.

“Sorry!” He adjusted the collar of River’s grey prison shirt. “You’ve got blood on your clothes, too. What happened to you?” 

“I fainted. Hit my head,” the memory was a vague outline of a thought, but it was there. “At least this tells us we haven’t been asleep for long. What’s the last thing you remember?” 

The Doctor thought for a moment. “I was with your parents. We’d gone to see Queen perform. Your mum went and watched Bohemian Rhapsody and wanted to go for the real thing next. I remember fainting, too. Thought I’d be roofied.” 

“Hm.” 

Sometimes, it felt like her parents weren’t ever that fond of spending time with her, while they hoisted the Doctor up on some sort of pedestal. But she decided that was hardly the thought she ought to be dwelling on now. 

“Where were you?” asked the Doctor.

“Where do you think?” River griped. She wasn’t much of a morning person, or an afternoon person, or a night person, for that matter. “I’m serving, like, a million life sentences. I was obviously in prison.” 

“Right,” he muttered. “Sorry.” 

“But we’re here now.” 

“Where do you reckon _here_ is?” 

The bus was starting to slow down. Up ahead, River could see a station coming into view. 

“I have no idea, but I think we’re going to find out.” 

The Doctor touched her arm. “Are you frightened?” 

River shook her head. “Just confused. You?” 

“Oh, I’m frightened. I haven’t got the TARDIS. I don’t even know where it’s gone.” 

River paled. “Oh.” 

“Are you frightened now?” 

“Just a bit.” 

“Well, don’t be,” the Doctor gave her arm a soothing pat. 

“And why not?” 

“Because if we both panic, we’re done for.” 

“Ah.” 

The bus stopped, its brakes squeaking. River was only just becoming aware of the other passengers as they began to stir and gather their things. There were children with mothers and fathers and little teddy bears clutched under their arms. One little girl sat across from River, seemingly unperturbed by the strangeness of the situation. She was listening to music on an old iPod, which was only strange because in the time River had been taken from, the devices had been obsolete for more than 500 years. 

There were old men and women with walkers folded in the cargo hold and portable oxygen tanks wired to their noses. Everyone had the same dazed look on their faces; like a youngster who had fallen asleep on a couch and woken up in bed, but without any of the comfort. 

“Welcome to Watertown!” came a voice over the PA.

“Watertown?” River eyed the Doctor, who gave a shrug. 

“Could it be a simulation?” 

“Suppose so. But it feels real,” River pressed her fingers against the cut on her head and winced. “Incorporating pain circuitry into a simulated reality takes a lot of time, and this cut is still fresh.” 

“A hologram, then?” 

“I don’t know,” River said. “Maybe.” 

“Young man,” one of the older passengers tapped the Doctor on his shoulder with her cane. “Can you tell me where we are?” 

The Doctor smiled politely. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we’re just as confused as you are.” 

“I was in Florida!” she huffed. “And now I’m not!” She was certainly dressed for Florida, with two smears of sunscreen on either cheek and a tacky one-piece bathing suit that left little to the imagination -- not that the Doctor wanted to imagine anything.

“That would seem to be the case, yes,” he paused. “The driver said Watertown. Does that mean anything to you?” 

The woman shook her head. “No, but I hope it means I can still go to the beach! My name is Gladys.”

“I’m the Doctor,” he introduced. “And this is Professor River Song. My wife, and my friend.” 

River smiled at the tender introduction. She hadn’t expected it. He wasn’t the romantic type -- at least not without a lot of persuasion. 

“Isn’t young love sweet!” Gladys swooned. “But honey, you’ve got a nasty cut! And your clothes are so dirty! And you really should do something with that hair of yours. Clean yourself up for your husband,” she reached out to touch River’s tangled curls, and River pulled away.

“I like it all just the way it is, thank you,” she grumbled. She didn’t like it, of course, but she also didn’t care if Gladys didn’t like it. She didn’t really like Gladys, so in a sense, she figured they were even.

A murmur rose above the rumbling sound of the busses idle engine; children were beginning to whimper, awake suddenly in a new place, and their parents were doing their best to assure them that everything was fine. But hushed tones and darting eyes gave away the fact that they didn’t seem to believe that themselves -- rather, they didn’t know what to believe at all.

The doors opened and a man came aboard. He wore a beige jacket over a nice shirt and trousers, and his tousled grey hair seemed to suit him. He smiled big and wide, flashing dazzling white teeth. 

“Hello, everyone!” 

River thought he sounded rather chipper for a man facing what was quickly becoming a frightened mob. 

“Where are we?” a man cried out. “None of us remember getting on this bus!” 

“Memory loss is common,” the man nodded understandingly. “And I can see that you’re upset, but this is Watertown! And my name is Pan. I’m the Greeter. This is a safe and good place, and we’ve been expecting you. Follow me, please.” 

“Oi,” River nudged the Doctor. “Is it just me, or does _safe and good_ usually mean _dangerous and very, very bad_?” 

The Doctor tried his best to hide the fact that he was smiling. “This is much better than a concert.” 

“And much better than prison. Love a good mystery.” 

_The burnt child loves the fire._

River cursed Luna’s voice in her head and stood up, following the crowd out from the bus and joining them outside. It was warm, and the breeze smelt like wildflowers. Strange, River thought. It looked like autumn, but it felt like spring.

A line of people -- Watertown natives, she assumed -- were standing across from them. They were smiling, too, almost too widely, as if they feared what might happen if they stopped. Each one held something -- a pie, a tray of biscuits, a buttercream cake -- and when Pan blew into a whistle, they stepped forward and each pair of natives pushed a gift into the hands of the new arrivals.

River and the Doctor were greeted by a warm apple pie and a couple nearing middle age. Unsure what else to do, the Doctor took the offering and smiled uneasily. He nudged River, and she managed a strained smile, too.

“We’ve been expecting you,” the woman smiled. “My name is Dor, and this is my husband, Har. We’re ushers.” 

“Fond of three-letter names, I see,” River shook their hands. Her cheeks were starting to get sore from forcing a grin. “River Song, and --” 

“The Doctor, yes,” Har smiled. “Like Dor said, we’ve been expecting you.” 

“Ah,” the Doctor shuffled the pie in his arms to free up a hand. “Then I believe you have us at a disadvantage.” 

“It’ll all make sense in time,” Dor assured. “Come along. We’ll put you up at our house. I think you’ll find that it’s perfectly agreeable! We’ll bandage up your cut, too,” she smiled warmly at River, who felt a chill run down her spine. 

The wind blew again, and it felt colder. River and the Doctor followed after Dor and Har, yellowed grass and soil crunching underfoot. River noticed how the boughs on barren trees didn’t move with this wind. Tall sunflowers growing wild on the side of the lane didn’t bend, and windchimes hung on boarded-up storefronts didn’t dare to ring. River couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched by something soulless and large.

She linked her arm with the Doctor’s. They followed their ushers through a town with dirt roads and empty shops, with wooden porches and creaky old swings and a steepled church with stained-glass windows. The sky overhead was orange and pink with the swirling colours of dawn. It was quite pretty, in the same out-of-context way that nightshade was pretty right up until it killed you.

Somewhere, someone was whistling a slow and haunting tune. River wondered vaguely if this is what pigs felt like on their way to the slaughterhouse; frightened in a cold and tinny way, but intrigued. Curious. Aware.

River was all of those things to a rather extreme degree. She was aware of the warmth of the Doctor’s arm against hers. She was aware of the dull throb in her head. She was aware of the way the whistling made that throb worse. She wondered if she was concussed. She did feel a little nauseous. Her ears were a little ringy. Her thoughts were a little scattered. The Doctor was chatting with Har, but she was only half-aware of what they were saying. 

“Is it teleportation?” the Doctor asked. “It has to be, right?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, son,” Har laughed. “You came in on a bus just like everyone else.” 

“Yes, but how’d we get on the bus?” 

“The same was everyone else gets on the bus.” 

“But how?” 

They came to Dor and Har’s house, a humble and dusty little cottage. It was increasingly evident that they weren’t going to get any answers out of their hosts, however gracious and kind they might’ve seemed. 

Well, thought River. They’d just have to go and find out on their own. 

***

It was a perfectly fine house, really. It looked just like what you’d picture if you closed your eyes and someone said the word “house” and asked you to describe what you saw.

The walls were eggshell white, and the floors were made of wood. There was a couch and a coffee table in the parlour and a countertop and stove in the kitchen. An old silver fridge held just about any food you could think to want, and upstairs, two bedrooms were fully-furnished with beds and mirrors and closets and dressers. The Doctor had set down the homemade apple pie on a desk tucked toward the window, and the whole room was starting to smell a bit like cinnamon.

But he noticed a few things that were objectively not right: First, the tele in the parlour wasn’t plugged in. It didn’t even seem to have a plug. It was just as much a part of the decor as the vase holding flowers on the mantle or the strange symbol mounted eerily to the wall. A circle with a series of dots in the center, he wondered briefly if it might’ve been a religious icon. It was familiar in the strangest way, like something from a dream or a childhood memory half-sheathed in mental shadows. He didn’t dwell on it for long; if it was important, it would come to him. 

Next, the fridge wasn’t cold, but none of the food had spoiled. In fact, it was all as ripe and as well as he assumed it had been in the grocer’s, if it had ever been there at all.

And finally, when he looked in the mirror in the bedroom, the face looking back was perfectly symmetrical, and it wasn’t reversed in the way that reflections typically were.

“What do you make of this?” he asked River. He held out his 500-year diary; in a normal mirror, the letters would’ve been backwards. But in this one, they were perfectly readable. “Left is left and right is right.” 

“Not a mirror, then,” River touched it, half-expecting her hand to slip right through it like a portal into a strange new world. (It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time.) But as she drummed her fingers against it, it was cold and hard and felt just like she’d expected it to feel. Everything was just like you’d expect it to be, and she figured that was probably the point.

“It’s like whoever built this place spent a long time determining what people would want it to look like,” she remarked. 

The Doctor nodded. “But why?” 

“I dunno,” River was looking out the old window onto the street below. “I don’t know what to make of any of this, really. It feels like a facsimile of a place rather than the real thing.”

“It’s like a zoo,” the Doctor mused. “You make the enclosure look as much like something’s natural habitat as you can, but it’s never real. Just plastic and glass.”

River crossed the floor and pulled open the closet. “I just hope I can find something to wear other than blood-soaked prison clothes.” 

“Don’t take what Gladys said to heart.” 

River wasn’t exactly listening. Absently, she dug through clothes that were either far too big or far too small, tossing spare bed sheets and blankets off to the side. She was finding that her options were sort of limited, if she didn’t want to wear a nightgown or men’s formalwear the whole time, but she managed to find a pair of black dungarees and a baggy striped jumper. She reckoned she’d look like a moody schoolgirl on break, like she ought to really be smoking a cigarette or spray-painting a naughty word on the side of an office building. But it sure did beat prison clothes. 

“It’s not exactly chic,” she complained. “But I suppose it’ll have to do.”

“Let me take a look at your cut,” the Doctor took River’s hand and sat her down on the bed once she’d changed. Dor had given them a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a handful of bandages. “We can’t solve a mystery if you’re hurt.” 

River chuckled. “I’m fine, Doctor. Really.” 

“Oh, indulge me,” he ran a thumb gently across her cheek. “It’s not too often I get to pretend to be a real doctor.” 

He dabbed a bit of alcohol onto a cotton swab and gingerly pressed it against the cut. River hissed in pain.

“You alright?” 

“I’m fine.” 

He tilted her chin back and shined the light of his sonic into her eyes.

“Pupils a bit dilated,” he mused. “Do you have a headache?” 

“I’m fine, Doctor,” River smiled, playfully swatting the sonic away. “A little bump on the head never killed anyone.” 

“Famous last words,” the Doctor teased. 

River smirked. “Oh, my last words will be much more...well, me. Something clever and grand and thoughtful.” 

The Doctor’s smile faltered a bit at the thought -- or rather, at the memory. He did his best not to think about the Library, but it was always there in the back of his mind, like a sad and symphonic musical score playing beneath the action in his life. He recovered quickly from his musings; if River caught on, his sudden sadness would be difficult to explain.

“That’s you, alright,” he pressed a kiss to her temple once he’d finished bandaging her up. “Clever, and grand, and thoughtful.” 

Har appeared in the doorway, smiling kindly. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But there’s a gathering in the church, and you’re both invited.” 

River laughed a bit impolitely. “Sorry, I don’t really do church.” The only church she’d heard of recently had been the Church of the Papal Mainframe, whose eccentricities included showing up naked. River might not have been the most discerning in terms of her romantic partners, but she didn’t take her clothes off for just anyone.

Har’s expressed hardened. “It isn’t an optional visit.” 

River and the Doctor shared a startled look.

“Well in that case,” said the Doctor. “I don’t suppose we have much of a choice.” 

“One more thing,” Har cleared his throat, suddenly nervous. He glanced around, as if he feared someone would hear him. “You haven’t happened to drink the water yet, have you?” 

They shook their heads.

“No,” replied the Doctor. “Why?” 

“I’m not supposed to tell you this,” Har leaned into the room, lowering his voice. “But I can sense that you two aren’t like the others. You--” 

Footfalls coming up quickly behind him silenced Har, and he straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and put on the same strangely synthetic smile he’d been wearing all day.

Dor’s hand found his shoulder and gave it a squeeze, but River had known enough less-than-kind touches to tell the difference between a gesture meant to soothe and one meant to threaten. 

“We’ll be leaving in five minutes,” she told them politely. “Pan doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” 

“Pan,” repeated the Doctor. “That’s the man from when we were getting off the bus. What’d he call himself? The Greeter?” 

“Pan is very busy serving in multiple roles around the town,” Dor grinned. “He likes to say that a good life is a life spent in service.” 

“Service to what?” River asked. 

Only silence answered her. That was never a good sign. Dor turned on her heels, and Har quickly followed her back downstairs. Once they were out of earshot, River turned her attention to the Doctor. 

“What do you--” 

“I have no idea.” 

“I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll steer clear of the water.” 

The Doctor nodded. “I think that would probably be wise.”


	3. The Lady in White

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL life is weird lately: I found out I didn't get into the doctoral programme I'd hoped to get into, so I brooded for a few days, and now my city is shut down and uni is cancelled because of the global pandemic??? 
> 
> But when life gives you lemons -- write! There's a solace in fiction; life may be strange and scary and sad, but at least we didn't wake up on a bus we don't remember boarding...
> 
> Hope you're all staying safe and healthy out there! xo

River really didn’t know if pigs had thoughts and feelings. 

She’d reckon they didn’t, if someone asked her and she had to give an answer, but if they did, she’d given it a lot of thought and she was fairly certain this is pretty much what they felt like as they were being led to slaughter. The same awareness she’d felt earlier was back and better than ever -- and by better, she meant worse. It was the kind of awareness that you get when the thing you’re suddenly aware of is your own mortality. You start to count your breaths. Count your steps. Count your heartbeats. Feel what it’s like to be in your own skin. It’s all about the little things you’re not really paying attention to until you suddenly become quite aware that they all might be gone within the hour.

Beneath their feet wasn’t pavement, but dirt roads that looked like they could’ve been snatched from a picture book about the old American West. Old houses and storefronts, long-since boarded up and left to rot, lined the roads. River hadn’t gotten a very good look at them on their way in; she was a bit preoccupied with the not-quite-panic-yet of waking up in a strange place. But now, she examined them expertly, and when she looked into the darkness in the windows, it felt like looking into someone’s eyes; she felt the urge to look away. Whatever she’d felt watching her earlier had eyes the exact size and approximate shape of blacked out windows.

The sun was high and hot in the sky, and despite the cool breeze that blew in, she could feel sweat forming at her brow. So, she thought. This is what it’s like to be helpless. She didn’t have any of her weapons and the Doctor didn’t have his TARDIS. Whatever was waiting for them would be met unopposed in this strange, dusty old place. 

They could see the church just a few hundred feet up ahead. If the town was a dinner table, the church would be seated at its head; it was the tallest building around, and one of the few that didn’t look rundown and dejected. It was strange, she thought, how people were so inclined to put their lives in the hands of some divine that might not’ve even been real. She was never one to believe in things like magic and faith; what she knew of the universe had taught her that life was rarely so gentle. It all felt very cult-like, and frankly, she’d had quite enough of someone telling her what to believe, what was right and what was wrong, what was good and what was evil. She could make those distinctions for herself, thank you very much. 

The Doctor nudged her.

“If things go south,” he began. “We need a plan.” 

“All we’ve got is your sonic,” she replied.

“And our wits.” 

“Well, our wits can only get us so far.” 

“What do you suggest?”

“We observe first,” River whispered. “But what are we looking for?” 

“I think we’ll probably know when we see it.”

“No talking back there!” Dor warned in a sing-song voice that made the Doctor grimace.

River muttered a string of curses under her breath -- curses that would’ve gotten her strange looks in even an average church. But as they entered the cathedral, it was suddenly quite evident that this was hardly your average church. 

What ought to be there? River didn’t have much experience with this sort of thing, but she’d anticipated some sort of altar, or shrine, or bimah, or something. Pews, maybe, with little shelves on the front for prayer books. For some reason, she always pictured red carpets and a grand old pipe organ, like in the films.

But this church was empty and flat, with pale wooden floors and strange shadows cast by light coming in through stained glass. In place of an altar, there was a small wooden box inscribed with the same symbol they’d seen on the wall in Dor and Har’s house -- a circle with a series of seemingly misplaced dots in the center. The symbol was engraved into the ground underfoot, too, and though River was hardly the superstitious type, an old adage came to mind; step on the crack, break your mother’s back. She took care to step around the lines. Just in case.

She caught the Doctor eyeing the engraving with a look of deep dissatisfaction.

“I saw it in Dor and Har’s house,” he told her. “I feel like I recognise it from somewhere.” 

“From where?” 

“That’s the thing,” the Doctor pouted. “I can’t remember.” 

“Welcome, welcome, everyone!” cheered Pan, stepping out of a door toward what River assumed was probably the front of the sanctuary. “Take a seat, and make yourself comfortable.” 

Slowly, the crowd began to sit cross-legged on the ground. River took a moment to look around in search of familiar faces; she saw the old woman from the bus -- Gladys, was it? She saw the tired, wide-eyed mother and her daughter with the iPod, and about a dozen others who looked just as out of place as she felt. A few, however, seemed to have settled in just fine, and were quietly admiring the vast sanctuary. Strange, she thought, how adaptable humankind could be.

She turned to the Doctor. “What do you--” 

Dor shushed her once again, and River scowled. 

“I know this has all been happening very quickly,” said Pan, managing a smile. “But you’ve all been specially chosen from your uniquely mundane lives, destined instead for something much greater.” 

River rolled her eyes, and the Doctor stifled a laugh.

“I recognise that you haven’t had much time with your hosts, but some of them may have filled you in on what we do here,” Pan went on, eyeing River and the Doctor specifically. Something like disdain seemed to flicker briefly in his stare, but as fast as it had come, it was gone. “Watertown started as an experiment in human happiness, and after years of refinement, it’s become the New Eden. The Garden of Righteousness, if you will.” 

The audience listened intently; they all seemed to be buying whatever drivel Pan was spewing. For as adaptable as humanity was, River thought, they were twice as gullible. 

“Watertown is a place where you can live in paradise, far away from Earthly woes,” he went on. “I’d be happy to answer any questions now. I’m sure you have them.” 

A young mother raised her hand, and Pan pointed to her.

“You said we were selected,” she began nervously. “Why us?” 

“Well,” thundered Pan. “You’re the righteous few! A smattering of good people among otherwise corrupt nations. This isn’t a sales pitch; I’m not trying to sell you an ideology, Miss, I’m simply the master of ceremonies at an awards banquet. Watertown is your award, and I’m so very proud of you all.”

River could’ve laughed. If she hadn’t already suspected this was all just a big farce, she certainly would’ve; there was no way in Hell -- no pun intended -- she’d fall into the same bracket as the Good Samaritan, or whatever. But the mother seemed satisfied. She hugged her children just a little closer, the faintest smile playing at her lips. 

How terrible, River thought. Preying upon people’s want to be good, to be praised, to be rewarded. There was a time in her life where she would’ve done anything to hear those words -- _I’m proud of you_. She would’ve killed for praise or died for it -- she’d done both, many times -- a handful of reassurances thrown her way would’ve been the greatest gift she’d ever been given. 

But she hadn’t gotten it from Kovarian. She hadn’t gotten it from her parents, though she knew she couldn’t blame them for that. The bottom line was that she saw herself reflected in the wide, wondering eyes of everyone else in that room, and she hated Pan for making them feel the way she just knew they felt. Was this empathy? 

Her fists balled instinctively. No, she thought. This was vengeance.

“Are we dead, then?” barked an older gent from the back of the crowd. A startled murmur washed over the audience, and Pan silenced them with a gentle laugh.

“No, no,” he soothed. “You’re all perfectly alive. Nothing ever dies in Watertown. God sustains us, here.” 

Another round of murmuring; this time, it stemmed from satisfaction. Indignantly, River raised her hand. Startled, the Doctor gave her a look of warning.

Tread lightly, sweetie, it said. We don’t yet know what we’re dealing with. 

Pan pointed at River, and she stood up. No one else had done that. 

“Why is it called Watertown?” 

Pan’s smile faltered once again, and River’s only grew. She’d gotten him off-script. Brilliant. 

“Well, you see, water sustains life, doesn’t it? Without it, there’d be nothing but dirt and bones. No existence, no oceans, no streams, no _rivers_.” 

The emphasis on the final word -- her name -- sent a chill up her spine. Did he know her? She was certain she’d never met him before. But his eyes, bearing into hers, seemed to hold a knowledge she had neither given him nor consented him to have.

Well, two could play at that game.

“A quick follow up, then,” she laughed sheepishly, all part of an act she’d gotten rather good at. “Where is Watertown? You’ve said we’re far from Earth, but the bus was clearly taking us from somewhere. But none of us can remember boarding it. Why is that?” 

“Watertown is on a planet toward the heart of the Canis Major Overdensity,” Pan didn’t miss a beat. “The bus shuttled you from the spaceport to the town because there’s an uninhabitable zone just outside of the city.”

“What makes it uninhabitable?” asked the Doctor. 

“Natural phenomena.” 

“So we’re in space?” asked the same man who’d asked about death. 

A little boy echoed, “Are you an alien!?” 

“Are you God?” 

And the floodgates had opened.

“Are you sure we’re not dead?” 

“What if we want to go home?” 

“How did our hosts get here?” 

“Are they angels?” 

“I think I’ve left the stove on!” 

“Alright!” Pan barked, holding up his hands. The audience fell silent; his voice boomed and echoed like a gunshot or a siren or a crack of thunder. River could feel the crowd holding their breath. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am no god. But our Old God is indeed among us.”

River felt the hairs stand tall on the back of her neck.

“This church,” he preached. “It’s called the Church of the Elder Lady. The symbol you see -- the circle -- is called the Circumfix. It represents the circular plane of existence, and the dots you see represent the five realms of paradise. Watertown is only the fourth.” 

“How do we get to the fifth?” asked Gladys, eyes narrowing behind her pink bifocal frames. 

Pan grinned. “How indeed. The time has come, my dear friends, to close your eyes. When you open them, you will see that which you could hardly believe. Do not fear! Because only in eliminating fear can you reach the fifth realm of paradise.” 

“I’m not afraid!” announced Gladys proudly, squeezing her eyes shut.

All around them, the congregants began to close their eyes. River and the Doctor gave each other a silent look that doubled as a promise; they wouldn’t look away no matter what. The worst nightmares were the kind that came to you, eyes wide open, unprotected by the shelter of sleep and uninhibited by imagination. But surely, they’ve seen worse. The Doctor squeezed River’s hand. 

The Doctor had seen more than his fair share of false Gods and plastic idols, angels made of stone and devils cased in metal. As far as he was concerned, both the divine and the dastardly were man-made and invented things in an otherwise neutral universe; he didn’t know what Pan was worshipping, or why the Circumfix was so distantly familiar, but he knew beyond doubt it was not holy.

He glanced around briefly in search of dissenters, folks who, like he and River, weren’t quite convinced that this wasn’t all some elaborate scam, some less-than-divine sales pitch for some awful new world. To his mild surprise, Har’s eyes were proudly open and fixed forward. To no surprise at all, the young mother’s eyes were on her children. Everyone else seemed keen on obeying Pan; he had a sort of sinister power to him, as if the moment he stopped smiling, something terrible would take over and the wrath of every false God would come pouring out like a waterfall of ink. He shook the image out of his head and glanced over at River.

“Har,” she mouthed. The Doctor nodded.

They watched as Pan set a candle on every dot inside the circle on the ground. One by one, he lit them before returning to the front of the church. He opened the box and pulled from it a large silver locket bearing the Circumfix. It looked old, River noted. Very old. It was one of those things that seemed to hold an eon’s worth of history in every flake of rust. 

Pan placed it around his neck with the reverence of a priest, twisting a little knob on the front until the amulet popped open and a folded up piece of parchment fell into his hand. He knelt before the candle closest to him and, eyes shut, placed the paper over its flame.

River figured it was no different than any other ceremonies — the taking of communion among Earth’s Catholics, the Gallifreyan tradition of peering into the Untempered Schism at the age of eight, or the ritual consumption of the dead carried out by ancient Martians. It was all about going through the motions, about doing something to make yourself feel less small or maybe even smaller, depending on how you looked at it. 

Yes, River had thought Pan’s ritual was nothing more than that — a ritual. That is, until the wind began to blow and the candles each extinguished, one by one, as if a sharp exhale had huffed and puffed and blown them out. She looked over at the Doctor. He was watching with an academic wonder; she imagined he was trying to sort out a rational explanation in a situation that was ever demanding of the supernatural. 

And then River noticed a door she hadn’t spotted before, tucked off in the shadows behind Pan and the little box; it was old and grand and ornate, and so large that it looked like it could’ve been a wall. She wouldn’t have noticed it at all, had it not begun to buck and knock and bend, like the heaving lungs of a great beast gasping for air. River’s eyes went wide. It was pretty hard to surprise her, and she was rarely ever shocked, but she felt both mingling in her gut with a nagging sense of dread.

The door clattered open, and from it floated a figure that made River’s blood run cold.

An old woman. Older than time, older than death, with matted white hair and wrinkled grey skin where her eyes should’ve been. Her mouth gulped in air like a fish blubbing for water, and when her stare -- empty and impossible -- turned to River, she felt a primal fear put its hands around her throat and squeeze out a startled gasp.

“It’s you,” River whispered, pushing herself backward on the floor until she was practically pressed up against the Doctor. Eyes wide and frantic, River’s breaths came out and short and shallow, tachy with panic. “How are you here? How? You’re just a bad dream. Just a--” 

The Doctor put his arms around her and pressed a hand over her mouth. 

“Relax,” he whispered, thumb brushing lightly against her cheekbone. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.” 

The creature turned to look toward them, but once it was satisfied with their silence -- and with the pure and abject terror shining blearily in River’s eyes -- it looked away.

“Look, now,” said Pan. “And see the Elder God, the Lady in White.” 

As the crowd slowly dared to look, they broke out into a startled symphony of gasps and curses, _oohs_ and _ahhs_ , professions of faith and declarations of doubt.

The Doctor glanced between the stone-faced Har and the petrified form of River Song, and he couldn’t quite decide which shocked him more. He’d barely seen River bat an eye at monsters like Weeping Angels and the Silence, and she could make a Dalek beg for mercy at the mention of her name. But something about the Lady in White had her rattled.

“The Lady has ruled kindly over the five realms for as long as the sun has burned. She’s as old as the darkness and as new as the first light of dawn; it is she who chooses when our time comes to make it to the fifth realm -- when we’ve eliminated fear from our lives.” 

“What is she?” asked a man from the back of the crowd. 

Pan’s smile fit like a baggy jumper, just a size too big.

“God,” he said, in awe. Whether it was true or not, he certainly seemed to believe it. “And she’s ready to make a selection.” 

The Doctor’s arms were still draped carefully around River’s shoulders, and as the creature let out a breath, River took hold of his arms like a safety bar on a carnival ride. Her breathing hadn’t calmed, and much to the Doctor’s shock, she seemed to teeter on the verge of tears. He never knew what to do when she was upset, because usually, an upset River was quiet and brooding with desert-dry eyes and a penchant for shooting whatever it was that made her upset in the first place. But for perhaps the first time in a very, very long while, she was feeling helpless and afraid, and she was holding onto his arm so tightly her nails had started to dig uncomfortably into his skin. He bit his lip to keep himself from hissing in pain. 

The Lady in White moved around the empty space, surveying the round faces of children and the aged cheeks of the elderly. The young mother, the Doctor noticed, clutched her children closer to her. Even the little girl with the iPod seemed suddenly disinterested in her music, eyeing the creature with mingled trepidation and awe. Children were easy to convince, the Doctor thought. They believed in things like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy just because it made life more interesting. The Lady in White was just another fantasy creature worth suspending disbelief. Adults were the skeptics -- for good reason, too. Funny, he thought, how age ripened the mind and rotted the imagination.

“God is good,” preached Pan. “She shall deliver us from our worldly doubts and fears, and provide us with all that we shall ever need in Paradise. Amen.” 

“Amen,” echoed the residents. 

The Lady reached out her arm, the sleeve of her white gown billowing in a wind that didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere in particular. She pointed a thin, spindly finger, and all eyes traced it to see who had been chosen.

“Gladys,” River whispered. 

“Congratulations,” Pan told her, offering his hand to help her up. Stunned, Gladys clambered to her feet. 

“I won?” Gladys grinned. “Oh, I’ve never even won a game of Bingo!”

“Well, it isn’t a raffle,” Pan chuckled. “But you certainly have been given a great gift: the fifth and final realm of paradise.” 

“Is it better than Florida?” 

The confusion on Pan’s face, however short lived, made it perfectly clear that he had no idea what Florida was. But nevertheless, he nodded.

“It is better than any other place to ever exist.” 

“Well, count me in!” Gladys smiled proudly, smugly, and the creature reached out to touch her forehead. The moment its finger made contact with her skin, both of them vanished in a puff of smoke. It was almost anticlimactic. Almost. 

Another round of mesmerised muttering took to the crowd, and with the Lady out of sight, River was trying to remember how to breathe. She noticed the indents her nails had made in the Doctor’s skin, and gave him a sheepish glance. 

“Where’d they go?” asked the little girl. Her mother shushed her. 

“No, no, let the child wonder,” Pan assured. “Gladys has gone Home, with a capital H. We’ll meet back here tomorrow and the Lady will make another selection. Remember -- you are all the righteous few. Watertown is designed to help you eliminate the last trace of fear from your lives, so that you, too, may join the Elder God in Paradise.” 

His stare flickered briefly toward River and the Doctor, and his smile felt like a threat.

“Go out in peace, my friends,” he raised his arms. “Sleep well.”


	4. Meeting of Minds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes a scene where the Doctor looks into River's mind, and it's a bit dark; trigger warning for self-destructive thoughts, verbal abuse, and mild gore. I can't tell if I'm happy with how this chapter turned out or not because it's a bit whump-y, but here goes nothing lol

The ushers lead the crowd out into the night, all chatting excitedly about the impossible spectacle they’d just witnessed. Many of them had been on the cusp of belief and doubt, and the apparition had pushed them over the line of faith.

it was a nice thought, God. Some sort of supreme being that explained away all the blame in the world, that alleviated the weight of decision -- and indecision -- from the shoulders of those carrying burden. For those people, the Lady in White was a sign they’d been waiting for their whole life, and it was just grand enough a display to chase away any questions about where, when, how, and why.

But for River, it was less of a dream come true and more of a living, breathing nightmare standing there right in front of her. When she’d stood up, her legs felt like jelly. Her hands were shaking, and her hearts beat out of sync. The cool night air would’ve been refreshing, had she not been sure it was morning only a few hours ago; even the gentle breeze filled her with a sense of dread she couldn’t seem to shake.

She’d been helpless in that church, and that was something she hadn’t ever really been before, and because she was helpless and because that was so new, she was terrified. And that was new, too. She was hardly the damsel-in-distress type; in fact, she usually fancied herself the hero. But when she saw the creature from her dreams standing there front and centre, all she wanted to do was crawl as close to the Doctor as she could and shut her eyes until he made it all go away. He was good at that -- making trouble run. But then again, she was, too!

How novel, how dainty, how cliche! She’d never needed a man to save her before. Hell, she’d never needed anyone. The universe was not a fairytale or bedtime story; she didn’t need a knight in shining armour to ride in on some pale-maned horse and save her from the dastardly court of kings. She’d faced more monsters than she could count without ever batting an eye. 

But she kept a lot of horrors locked up in her head. What if the Lady in White wasn’t the only thing that was real? What if it all was, somehow, somewhere? She feared the implications of the creature’s being there. She feared the Lady was a bad omen; a black cat crossing under a ladder, or three dismal death knocks at fate’s door. Something was coming for her, and there was nowhere to go and no way to fight it.

“Hey,” the Doctor put a hand on her back, and she startled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.” 

“I’m fine,” River cleared her throat.

“Can I ask you something?”

“I’d really rather you didn’t.” 

“Did you recognise the Lady in White, River? Back there, in the church...I’ve never seen you look so--”

“No.” She’d answered too quickly. She was a very good liar, most of the time -- she could even fool herself if she tried hard enough. But this time, she knew the Doctor could see through her clear as day.

“You said she was only a bad dream,” the Doctor urged gently.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” River smoothed out her dungarees and sniffled, pulling herself back together. “I’m sorry that I overacted. It just caught me off guard, but I’m fine now. We have to find out where it took Gladys.” 

She quickened her pace to walk ahead of him, and he jogged to keep up. 

“River, we’re in the middle of a very, very strange situation with major black outs in our memories; we don’t know how we got here, where exactly we are, or why we’re here. A woman was just taken someplace by whatever the hell that thing is. Now is hardly the time for pride!” 

“It isn’t pride!” River turned to face him so abruptly he nearly walked right into her.

“What is it, then?” He reached out to take her hand, and she flinched away. “Fear? Guilt? Whatever it is, you can tell me! We have to be honest with each other, because right now, we’re all we’ve got.” 

They’d stopped outside of Har and Dor’s house. Nighttime in Watertown was much different than the daylight had been; there was something sinister about the way shadows didn’t seem to be attached to anything in particular, or about the way certain corners of night looked darker than the rest. River crossed her arms and shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.

“I’ve had nightmares about her. The Lady in White,” she confessed. “They aren’t particularly scary, and all the Lady does is watch me. But nothing I’ve ever dreamed up has frightened me more. There. That’s all. Happy?” 

The Doctor’s expression softened, and River groaned.

“Don’t you look at me like that!” 

“Like what!?” 

“Like I’m some sad and fragile thing. I don’t want your sympathy.” 

Dor and Har came up behind them, unlocking the door and gesturing for them to come inside. 

“It isn’t safe to be out very long after dark,” Dor smiled pleasantly. 

“Why’s that?” River asked her. 

“You don’t want to find out, do you?” Dor’s smile twitched, and she pointed again to the door.

River shared a look with the Doctor, and they made their way inside. 

“I’m sure it’s a lot to take in,” said Har. “But you get used to it.” 

“Yeah?” River didn’t believe him. “How long have you lived here?” 

“All my life.”

“Hm. What about you, Dor?” 

“All my life.” 

“Right,” River followed the Doctor into the kitchen. She wondered if he was hungry; she certainly was. And thirsty. But Har’s warning about the water had stuck with her, and she’d much rather wait out the occasional hunger pain than risk whatever he’d implied they’d be risking.

Har and the Doctor had occupied themselves in the parlour, chatting about something that River figured wouldn’t yield any of the answers the Doctor was hoping to weasel out of him. Alone with Dor in the kitchen, River decided to have a go at weaseling herself. 

“I’ve heard a few strange things about Watertown,” River began, leaning up against the counter. 

“Is that so?” she chuckled, sounding harmless. River had the feeling it was all an act.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is,” she paused for effect. “Why can’t we go outside at night?” 

“The uninhabitable places Pan mentioned,” said Dor absently. “They’re fenced off and far out near the city limits, but we wouldn’t want someone wandering there by mistake, would we? You know, they say curiosity killed the cat.” 

“But satisfaction brought it back,” River finished the parable with a smug smile. Dor was hardly impressed. 

“You’re quite the rascal,” she chuckled. “I was like that, too, once.” 

“Like what?” 

“Fiercely independent, and a bit self-righteous.” 

Offended, River huffed out a sarcastic, “Thank you.” 

“But I’ve since learned that the world was not made for me, and I’m not at its centre. Rather, I was made for the world, to serve it, to tend it, to worship it,” Dor looked out the kitchen window above the sink and smiled into the night. “It’s a lovely thing, to know I’m small in the eyes of God.”

River stood beside her, hands tucked away into her pockets. She wanted to understand her just as much as she figured Dor wanted to be understood, but the expanse between them was vast and wide. She didn’t trust her; Dor was just as strange as the cold refrigerator without a plug or the mirror that didn’t flip images, and River trusted her even less.

“I’m not one for religion,” she said. “But I would’ve thought being close to a God ought to make you feel larger than life, not small.” 

Dor shook her head. “It’s a heavy burden, greatness. It’s a relief to know it isn’t I who must bear it. But rather, the Lady in White. When we worship her, we worship the sacrifices she makes. It’s hard to choose. But we don’t have to, because she makes the choices for us.” 

River’s dream fluttered into her head, and she felt herself standing before the Lady, tasked with making a terrible choice. She wondered what it meant. If the Lady in White felt that same dreaded, terrible sense of indecision every day in the church...what a horrible life. Sympathy slid in to take the place of fear, and River took a quick breath to ease it all away.

“Why is it so hard to choose if the Fifth Realm of Paradise is a good place?” 

Dor hummed a tune, with absolutely no intention of answering River’s question. She opened the fridge and pulled out a carafe of water. 

“Alright, then,” said River. “What about that? The water?” 

Dor’s humming stopped mid-note, and she turned to look at River as if she’d said something evil.

“What about it?” 

“Well, I’ve heard it might not be very wise to drink it.” 

Dor set the carafe down on the counter with a stern thump. Her lips pulled into a taut, pursed line.

“Who told you that?” 

Har stepped into the room, as if on cue. With the Doctor at his heels, he smiled warmly. 

“Funny fellow you’ve got here,” he said affectionately to River. “Your mother must be proud you found a man like him.” 

With Kovarian in mind, River laughed at the irony.

“Something like that,” she replied, giving the Doctor a teasing wink. He did his best to look exasperated, but his smile gave him away.

“It’s late,” said Dor, pouring herself a glass of water. She drank it all in one sip. “You ought to be getting to sleep.” 

“Wasn’t it just morning a little while ago?” the Doctor asked.

Har laughed. “Time passes differently in the church. You get used to that after awhile, too, don’t worry.” 

“Yeah,” muttered the Doctor. “I’ll bet.” 

Dor corralled them up the stairs and into their room. It still smelled like cinnamon, and the pie, somehow, was still warm. It was hardly the strangest thing that had happened that day, and so River sat down on the bed and did her best not to think about it.

The Doctor took a seat beside her.

“How’s your head?” 

“I’m fine.” 

The Doctor laid back and opened his arms. “C’mere.” 

With a heavy sigh, River reluctantly laid down. The Doctor hugged her tightly, and as her ear fell against his chest, she listened to the steady one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four of his hearts beating in time. It was a rhythm that soothed her no matter where she was; when she was in Stormcage, awakened by a nightmare and alone with the rain pounding against her barred-up windows, she’d find herself drumming the beat lightly on her bed frame. She figured it was a little like writing the name of your schoolyard crush on the inside of your notebook, only far more personal. And much more stupid. 

“You’re sentimental and embarrassing,” she told him when he kissed the bandage on her head, but a part of her was scolding herself. 

“And what’s so wrong with that?” asked the Doctor with a grin. River chuckled and gave his arm a playful punch. 

“Nothing, I suppose. If you’re into that sort of thing.”

They laid in silence for awhile, content in each other’s arms. The world outside was strange, and the world inside didn’t make much sense, either, but as long as River could hear the thudding of the Doctor’s hearts and the Doctor could smell the familiar blend of lavender and gunsmoke in River’s curls, there was a fine line of stability amid the unease. 

“I tried to talk to Dor about the water,” River said after a while. “She got very defensive.” 

“Yeah,” the Doctor grumbled. “I tried asking Har some questions, too. He made everything into a joke.” 

“Guess we won’t be getting any answers the easy way, then.” 

“No,” said the Doctor. “I guess not.” 

A pause.

“You said you’ve dreamt about the Lady in White,” the Doctor traced his fingers soothingly along her back, noting the way her shoulders tensed when he brought it up. 

“I told you, Doctor, I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“That’s the thing,” the Doctor took a deep breath. “You might not have to. Time Lords are telepathic, and--” 

River sat up just enough to look at him like he’d gone mad.

“That’s too dangerous,” she scolded. “Yes, we’re close enough in our respective timelines right now where our lives make sense to each other, but you can’t go looking inside my head; I’ve seen older versions of you. If you see anything that could be a spoiler, Doctor, it could--”

“I know, I know,” the Doctor nodded, a foggy sort of sadness clouding his head. “But if we’re careful, I can only look at what I’ve got to see to understand what we’re up against here. I think you know something you don’t know that you know.” 

River scoffed. “How is that even possible?”

“I have a theory.” 

“What?” 

“Alright. Hear me out. You recognise the Lady in White. That’s a fact. I think it’s fair to say that, because you recognised her, your being here isn’t a coincidence. You’ve got enough Time Lord in you to receive telepathic messages, but enough human to have a hard time interpreting them,” he watched as her expression shifted from mild curiosity to annoyance. “What?” 

“You think this creature is sending me telepathic messages through my dreams?” 

The Doctor nodded. “Yes.” 

“That’s bonkers.” 

“Oi!” hissed the Doctor. “We once watched Stevie Wonder perform at the Frost Fair in 1814, 136 years before he was born, and telepathy is where you draw the line!?” 

“Well I had to draw it somewhere, didn’t I!?” River flopped over onto her side with a frustrated groan. “Besides, my Time Lord DNA is really just for show; I don’t think I have the telepathic gene.”

“You can regenerate.” 

“Yes.” 

“You’ve got two hearts.” 

“Yes.” 

“Maybe you’ve got this, too!” 

“Doctor,” River turned to face him with a huff. “You’re being annoying.” 

“Look, if I’m wrong, I’ll be able to tell; if an average mind is like a storage locker for facts and memories, a telepath’s is more like a storage locker underwater; it has its own facts and memories, but it’s got this reflective and fluid surface -- and a depth. Does that make sense?” 

“Of course not!” 

“I don’t think that I’m wrong about you, River. In fact, I’m surprised I didn’t figure it out earlier. Remember the tree spirit in the Bluewood forest?” 

River nodded, wondering vaguely why that suddenly mattered. 

“It established a telepathic connection to you, and it talked to you. But no one else could hear it like you could.” 

She hadn’t thought of it that way. “Yes, I do suppose that was odd, but--” 

“It wouldn’t hurt to try,” he urged. “I’ll be careful. I won’t look at anything I’m not meant to see.” 

After a moment’s hesitation, River nodded. It was such a tender and intimate thing, what he was suggesting. There wasn’t anything as raw in its nakedness as peeling open someone’s thoughts and looking inside; she wondered if he realised the weight of what he was asking her to do, and what it meant that she was letting him do it. She trusted him with her life, yes, but as far as she was concerned, her life really didn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. Now, she was trusting him with her thoughts -- the things she kept locked up and dreaded to discuss even with the likes of Luna, whose job it was to hear crazy and dark things without judgement. 

The Doctor, sensing her unease, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. 

“If you really don’t want to do this,” he said. “We can find another way.” 

“No, no,” River sat up and faced him. “Let’s just get this over with, yeah? I reckon you’re wrong, anyway, so it won’t matter much.” 

“Okay,” the Doctor gave her a reassuring smile as he cupped her cheek. “You have to focus very hard, okay? On the Lady in White. Don’t let yourself spiral.”

River nodded. “Yeah, alright. Fine. Just do it if you’re going to do it.” 

Slowly, he brought his forehead to touch up against hers, a hand on either of her cheeks. His thumbs settled in just below her eyes while the rest of his fingers prodded lightly against her jawbone. He took a breath in, and River felt her chest expand, too. They were connected. A bridge had been built, and the Doctor was preparing himself to cross it. 

He shut his eyes, and whatever existed at the other side of the bridge rushed him at the speed of light, and hit him like a ton of bricks. 

A small room. A grey room. Bars on the window. Jail. A guard with a smirk and a slew of ulterior motives. Hands wandering where they shouldn’t be, Blood. A finger missing. Screaming. There were red stains on River’s teeth when she grinned.

Deeper, the Doctor thought. He had to go deeper, but not too deep, or he’d get caught up in the riptide of River’s mind. She certainly was a telepath -- of that, he’d never been more sure. 

“Focus, sweetie,” he told her through the link. He heard his own voice in her head, like it was coming through over some mental PA speaker.

Deeper. Darker. Further. Into the realm of dreams and nightmares, where monsters lurked and smirked and gawked. Kovarian. The Silence. Laughter, but no happiness, no comedy, just mocking voices rising and falling in rapid crescendo. A weight in the chest, a heaviness in the lungs, the inhale before a scream. _You’ll never be good. You’ll never be kind. You are a weapon. You were made to destroy._

Luna. Who was Luna? _The burnt child loves the fire. So start a fire, stupid girl._

Kovarian. _You really are stupid. Can’t do anything right. Can’t even kill someone properly. Can’t even kill yourself properly._

The Doctor heard his own voice. Things he’d never said to her. Things he’d never say to her. Things she imagined him saying to her all the time. _You monster. You selfish monster. I pity you. Do you blame me? Do you think it’s my fault they hurt you? No? No, you only blame yourself._

“River,” the Doctor called out to her. “You’re spiraling. We need to stop.” 

In her head, the Doctor saw himself appear, and there was a gun trained on his chest. He traced the arm holding it back to the person that arm belonged to, and he wished he could say he was shocked to see that it was River. She was crying. She was trembling. She was dressed in a spacesuit that was moving for her. Deciding for her. Everyone was always deciding everything for her! The Doctor felt her rage and her grief, and it burned hotter than the surface of the sun.

_I don’t want to kill him. I love him. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I could’ve been the girl from Leadworth. I could’ve lived in a little house with a little sibling and two parents who held me when I was frightened and bandaged my cuts when I fell. Maybe I would’ve been bored. But I would’ve liked to have a choice. I never had a choice about anything in my life! I deserve that. No, I don’t. But I want it. I want to choose for myself._

He tried to pull himself free from the link; River’s panic was pressing down on them both. He could taste the blood in her mouth -- not from biting the guard that groped her, but from biting down so hard on her own lip to keep from crying out. But as hard as he tried, it was like some part of his mind had gotten snagged on some part of hers; he couldn’t break the link until she let go. 

“River, stop,” he soothed. “It’s alright. We don’t have to do this. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I’m so, so sorry.” 

Everything changed very quickly. They were standing in a room cluttered with broken things; old toys -- teddy bears with the heads ripped off and stuffing littered about, dolls without their button eyes, wooden trains with no wheels, and deflated playground kickballs. In the corner, a little girl sat with her knees pulled to her chest and her head tucked into her arms. Her shoulders heaved with every sob. She’d made the wrong choice. She’d begged the universe for the right to choose something for herself; of course it had given her a question with only wrong answers and said, _here, you want to choose? Go ahead. Good luck. Fuck you._

Towering over her was the Lady in White, and she stood out. River’s memories were cast in dismal grey, but the Lady seemed to radiate an ancient and timeless light. She was not a memory. She was a message. The Doctor had been right. He’d never been so unhappy to be right. 

The Lady opened her arms, and the room around them melted away. The Doctor suddenly found himself standing in the middle of a field. The sky was cloudy, and it smelled like rain. A few feet away, River stood, her hair wild in the wind. The Doctor reached out to her, and she reached toward him. 

The Lady in White appeared in between them. And then another like her appeared. And another. And another. They filled the field, roaming it and reaping it in the days before time. They were a culture. A species. And one by one, they vanished as the rain started to fall. Soon, only the Lady in White was standing. Her face hadn’t changed, but somehow, she looked sad. No, more than sad. Heartbroken. Lonely. The Doctor knew that look well; she was the last of her kind. She was very, very old, and very, very alone. Time had gone on and left her behind. 

The people of Watertown appeared one by one, standing stiff in a way that reminded the Doctor of table footballers. Har. Dor. Pan. They didn’t understand the Lady in White. They mistook her for a God, but she wasn’t a God any more than the Doctor fancied himself one.

The scene began to crumble. River had found the Lady in White and focused on her, but she was losing her grasp. The whispers were coming back, faint at first but getting louder with every syllable. Distorted voices, out of tune, left unpitched -- radio signals forced to fade by distance, and coming back on another frequency. 

_Tick tock, goes the clock, and now what shall we play? Tick tock, goes the clock; now summer’s gone away. Tick tock, goes the clock, and all the years they fly. Tick tock, and all too soon, your love will surely die._

Flickers of memories came and went. They were fast flashes of light that lit up an inky darkness, and for the duration of every illuminated second, multitudes of horrors could be seen moving through the night just before being cast once again out of sight: Weeping Angels. Daleks. Cybermen. Kovarian. The Silence. Dead deer with rot on their scruff. The prison guard with the bloodied hand. An impossible astronaut underwater. 

The Doctor could feel the sickening pressure of Lake Silencio bearing down on him. It felt like it was crushing his chest. Lake Silencio contained exactly 3,913,010,672,301 gallons of water, and each gallon weighed, as the Americans would say, 8.33 pounds. Of course River knew that. And now, thanks to the link, the Doctor knew exactly how heavy the weight of the world was as it weighed down on her shoulders. 

The Doctor tried again to break the link, but the snag was still there. He couldn’t pull away. Over the sound of the whispering voices came the howl of wind, growing louder, and louder, and louder, until it turned into a deafening scream. 

With a sudden jolt, the air was knocked out of the Doctor’s lungs, and when he opened his eyes, he was staring at the ceiling in the bedroom of Har and Dor’s old house in Watertown. He sat up quickly and turned to River. Breathing heavy, she’d pushed him away; she didn’t know how to break the telepathic link from the inside. Of course she didn’t. He hadn’t taught her how. He cursed himself for what he could only have called a cruel oversight. Her cheeks were wet and red, her laboured breathing punctuated by sharp and winded hiccups. Her hands shook as she pressed them over her face to hide her shame.

“River, hey,” the Doctor pulled her into a hug, one hand cradling the crown of her head and the other settling in against the small of her back. “I’m so sorry.” 

“I hate you,” River muttered weakly into his shoulder, but she burrowed into his jumper and hid her face against the tweed.

“You don’t,” he said softly. “But I’d hardly blame you if you did.” 

There was a fullness in his throat, and he couldn’t stand the quiet sounds of River trying to catch her breath, and so he began to babble.

“I’m sorry. You’re okay now. You were brilliant. My clever girl, you were so brilliant.” He pressed a kiss to her sweat-soaked temple and tightened his arms around her.

He whispered apologies to her until I’m sorry stopped sounding like a set of words and started to sound more like a mantra devoid of meaning. And once that happened, all he could do was look at River as he held onto her, half-veiled in darkness and half-cast in ivory moonlight. 

If he rounded up every great poet to ever write from every corner of the universe, across all time and space, and stuck them in a room together, he knew not even they could put into words how deeply he adored her; there weren’t enough similes or metaphors in any language ever spoken to do it all justice. But there was a time for poetry and a time for action, a time for words and a time where silence said it all. And so, in a rare and humbling moment, the Doctor said nothing.


	5. Voices of the Dead

River had only felt so sick twice in her life. The first time, she’d just used up all of her remaining regenerations in war-torn Berlin to save the Doctor, who, of course, she’d been responsible for killing in the first place. When she’d woken up in a hospital bed with IVs in her arms and little electrodes stuck to her chest, she’d felt properly ill. If she’d been run over by a lorry and then processed through a meat grinder, she reckoned she would’ve felt better. It was a deeper-than-bone ache, as if every cell in her blood and cartilage had been fried and shocked and smashed and beaten into a pulp, and then sculpted not-so-neatly back together with tape and glue. 

The second time was when she woke up in a small bedroom in Watertown, with bold rays of sunshine streaming in through the window and the nagging scent of cinnamon lingering in the air. She sat up from her nest of blankets and pillows and stretched with a groan.

She was just starting to wonder where the Doctor had gotten to -- and whether or not she ought to worry -- when he appeared standing in the doorway holding a plate of slightly burnt breakfast foods. 

“Good morning,” he smiled sheepishly. “How are you feeling?” 

“Hungry,” She couldn’t help but smile. “I hope you’re a better cook than I am a telepath.” 

The Doctor sat down beside her, passing her the plate of black bacon, eggs, and fried tomatoes.

“You were fine. You were good, really. The bad bits...those were my fault for pushing too fast and too hard, and I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong. I mean, I was right about you having the gift, but I was wrong to make you--” 

River pressed a strip of bacon to his lips to shut him up. 

“I’m fine, sweetie,” she assured him.

The Doctor sighed warily. “You didn’t seem fine. You were really upset.” 

“And now I’m not,” River urged. “I promise. I’m fine. Besides, we learned that the Lady in White isn’t some sort of God. She’s from the planet’s native race. I think she’s the very last of her kind, and I think she’s exhausted.” River took a bite of one of the tomato slices. “The people here are essentially forcing her to play God.” 

“Yeah,” agreed the Doctor, deciding it was best not to pressure River any more than he already had. “Do you think they know? That she’s not a God, I mean. That she’s just very old and very tired and, I think, very scared?” 

River shrugged. “I’m sure someone out there knows. Or knew. But groupthink and desire to believe...those are powerful things. I spoke with Dor about it. She said it all really boils down to the difficulty of choice; the Lady in White makes decisions so they don’t have to worry about choosing the wrong thing.” 

“Like in your nightmares.” 

River looked at him sternly, and the Doctor looked away. 

“Sorry.” The slight faux pas felt oddly similar to inquiring about someone’s due date only to be told they aren’t pregnant -- something the Doctor had done more than once. 

“But why us? Why me?”

“It always seems to be us. It always seems to be you,” the Doctor cupped her cheek, smiling sadly. “Maybe the universe knows there isn’t anyone better, smarter, braver, more capable, or who cares more about the fate of living things than Professor River Song.”

River took another bite of her breakfast and shrugged, unimpressed. “Or maybe it just thinks I’m a proper prick and wants to punish my arrogance, or something.”

With an affectionate smile, the Doctor snagged a piece of bacon from the plate.

“Yeah,” he teased, taking a bite. “Maybe that’s it.”

“What does it mean, being a telepath?” River asked him after a pause. She had a pretty good idea of what telepathy was, and how Time Lords in particular used it, but she’d never fancied herself one for extrasensory perception. She wasn’t very good at understanding other people’s thoughts and motives when they spelled them out for her -- in other words, she didn’t really ever play nice with others. Telepathy seemed to suggest a certain ethos that she was almost positive she fundamentally lacked.

“Oh, you know,” said the Doctor, rather vaguely. “Time Lords can link their minds to other minds; hear thoughts, see dreams, feel feelings, sometimes, but that bit is harder. Imagine thoughts as a fish in a tank, and most people can’t see through the glass on the tank, because it’s too thick. But telepaths -- Time Lords, and a few other races, too -- can see the fish perfectly if they concentrate hard enough. It’s like that. Except it really isn’t like that all, but if it helps you understand your gift, it’s perfectly like that.” 

River groaned, flopping back down into her pillow. “Hardly a gift. And why now? Why didn’t I know I could do this before?” 

The Doctor laid down beside her. “Maybe you’re a late bloomer.” 

River gave his arm a playful swat. “Try again, sweetie.” 

“Well, have you ever tried telepathy before? It isn’t really something that comes naturally. You’ve gotta sort of work at it.” 

“Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I’d like to work at.” 

“You never know when it might come in handy.”

“Can I put thoughts into people’s heads, too?” 

The Doctor gave her a stern look. “Why would you want to do that?” 

With a devious smile, River shrugged. “You never know when it might come in handy.” 

“Ha, ha,” teased the Doctor. “Behave.” 

“Behaving is boring. Can I, though? Make people think things?” 

“You’ve got to learn to focus on your own thoughts before you can go about manipulating other people’s,” the Doctor jabbed a stern finger into her chest, and she took hold of it. Under her touch, the Doctor’s austere facade began to crumble. He softened. “But yes, eventually, I think you’ll be able to do just about anything.” 

River beamed. “Oh, brilliant.” 

Dor knocked against the jamb, smiling unnervingly. 

“We’ll be going soon,” she told them. 

“Where?” asked River.

“The church, of course! The Lady in White will make her second selection. The three of us can head over together as soon as you’re ready.” 

“Three?” the Doctor did a quick mental count and decided that was not at all right. 

“Yes,” confirmed Dor, seemingly unaware. “You, myself, and Miss Song.” 

“Professor Song,” corrected River. No one ever seemed to get that right! “And what about Har?” 

“I’ve never known anyone by that name, dear,” Dor looked at her strangely. “Are you feeling quite alright?” 

“Har is your husband, Dor.” A strange feeling was beginning to creep into River’s stomach, and she had a feeling it had very little to do with the (frankly absurd) amount of butter the Doctor used in his cooking.

“I’ve never married,” Dor started wistfully out the window, and then turned to River and the Doctor with a grin. “Unlike you two! What a handsome couple you make! You must be very happy together!” 

“Yes,” the Doctor faltered. “Occasionally we are.” 

“Well, finish up your breakfast and we’ll be on our way!” Dor left the room with a trail of confusion and uncertainty in her wake. 

“What in the world do you think that was?” the Doctor stared after her, incredulous. 

“No idea,” River set the plate aside; her appetite had gone. “Did you see him this morning when you were cooking?” 

The Doctor shook his head.

“No one was downstairs. I’d assumed they’d just gone out.” 

“Hm,” River stood up and stretched until something in her back gave a pleasant crack. She still felt positively knackered; her head hurt, her muscles ached, and her bones seemed to rattle with every breath. But the mystery was thickening, and the Lady in White -- as terrifying as she was -- had appeared in River’s dreams for a reason. 

And beyond that, she’d learned that she had a new skill, and as horrific as it was to lose control of it last night, she rather liked the idea of mastering her own mind. And she doubly liked the idea of having access to other people’s thoughts. Oh, the ways she’d terrorise the jail guards! She’d make them as mad as they thought she was. Put nightmares in their heads. Twist their thoughts into origami monsters. Make them wish they were never born -- or at least, that they’d never teased her, or taunted her, or reached their grubby hands through the bars on her cell. 

She smiled, and only when the Doctor gave her that same austere glance did she realise she ought to save revenge for later. Right now, there was a mystery to solve and a God to debunk.

*** 

It wasn’t the church that gave River the creeps this time around. Rather, it was the fact that it didn’t seem to give anyone else the creeps that made her feel just a bit uneasy. 

The townspeople were just as happy and just as eerie as ever, but now, many of the travelers they’d come in with on the bus were wearing the same loose-fitting smiles and staring at Pan’s small altar with the very same reverence. Yesterday, she’d thought it was just mankind’s tendency to adapt. But today, she was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t something else entirely, and if it might’ve had something to do with Har’s final warning about the water. Everything was connected, like a giant brain with firing synapses and nerves and whatever else brains were made of. She just couldn’t quite find where one connection started and the others stopped. 

“Welcome back, friends,” said Pan, though River wasn’t really listening to him. She’d heard his spiel before; it was bound to be the same old drivel again. “I hope you’re feeling well-rested. It’s a beautiful morning outside; pink skies, green grass, crisp air. God is good.” 

“Amen,” echoed the congregants. River rolled her eyes. The Doctor nudged her lightly in the ribs.

“Oi, manners,” he mouthed. 

“To hell with that,” River replied. 

Pan was going through the motions again; the crowd had shut their eyes and the candlelight had gone out. River watched the wooden box with a growing sense of dread, but she was determined to keep a lid on it this time; she swallowed her fear and squared her shoulders and set her jaw. Bring it on, she thought. 

But something was different. She told herself it was all in her head, literally. She’d just had the equivalent of a strip search done to her brain, and it had left her feeling a bit exposed. She trusted the Doctor, though she didn’t care to dwell long enough on the things he’d seen in her memories and dreams; he certainly took care not to make a big deal of it, and that was one of the reasons why she loved him.

As the doors to the ancient chamber rattled and shook, a child in the audience began to cry a high-pitched and eager wail, like it knew something. Children always knew. River noticed the way the Doctor’s shoulders tensed, and she reached out to him. But her hand froze half-way to his; the Lady in White appeared, and with her, a flood of whispered voices speaking long-dead languages washed over River’s brain, and she had to stop herself from reaching instinctively to cover her ears. The sound was coming from within, and it was deafening. Worst of all, no one else seemed to hear it! 

The Lady paused, her white robes billowing, her slacked jaw giving a slight twitch. She looked over at River briefly, and River looked up at her; they shared a pause that contained multitudes. River felt the same prodding around the edges of her consciousness that she’d felt when the Doctor had first established a link with her, his forehead warm and clammy against hers, and then she felt the same vulnerable openness that let her know the Lady was looking into her mind. River shut her eyes and tried to look back.

It was not her best idea. 

Looking into the mind of an ancient, mysterious god of unknown power and prowess came with a risk or two, and usually, River rather liked risks. The burnt child loves the flame, and all that. But this was not a risk she’d anticipated; the Lady doubled back and let out a howl so deafening the stained glass windows shattered. It tore through River’s thoughts with the ease of a knife through butter and the sharp killing capacity of a hunter’s blade through flesh. Every dark thought River had ever dreamed up flickered before her eyes in a dizzying visual cacophony; Kovarian and the nightmare room and her hellish lullaby, the Silence and the sound of quiet where quiet ought not to be, the crushing pressure of a lake forcing her down.

_They made you a doctor today, did they? Doctor River Song. How clever you are._

Pride. Fear. Guilt. Doubt.

Back farther, farther still: The streets of New York, and how cold the night air’s bite felt on a sick and feeble child’s skin! How lonely was the night, and how distant the stars behind a layer of lights and clouds. The universe was writing her a sad little poem, like a bedtime story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The only problem was that the beginning, the middle, and the end didn’t seem to be happening in the proper order. They never did. It was an ongoing problem. 

_It’s alright. It’s quite alright. I’m dying, but I can fix that._

_It’s easy, really._

_Do not fix that which is not broken._

_Death is not a fault or a flaw._

_Let it come naturally, like a sunset._

_A story with a beginning, a middle, and an end._

_A happy end?_

_No, no, I’m afraid not._

_So it’s a true story, then?_

She looked down at her hands. Light. Dandelion yellow, and shimmering with the raw power that was regeneration energy. It stung, and it tickled, and it burned. How odd it is -- terrifying, really -- to teeter on the cusp of life and death, and then suddenly, to be born.

_We’re always coming for you. We made you who you are. You were born to kill the Doctor._

_And you are forgiven. Always and completely forgiven._

_I have died for him many times. Always._

_I knew a girl; she thought she could do anything. She used to run, and laugh, and cry, until she realised she’d never had a choice about any of those things. And then she fell in love. Love -- that’s something beyond choice. Beyond possibility._

_Everybody knows that everybody dies._

_No, no, not everyone. Not everyone is so lucky._

It was hard to find where her thoughts began and where the Lady’s ended, or if they were just interwoven into a sudden, tight-coiled double helix. But as quickly as the sounds and sights had come, they were all gone; River found herself sitting in silence among the rest of the congregants, with no evidence that anything at all had happened except for a few beads of sweat on her brow. The windows weren’t shattered after all. In fact, they looked rather nice in the early morning sunshine. Had the crying baby been real? If it had been, it had soothed itself back to sleep. Everything was peaceful. Pensive. Still.

It seemed only seconds had passed. If that.

She looked down at her hands. To her relief, they were not, in fact, glowing.

The Doctor turned to look at her with mild confusion and mouthed, “You alright?” 

River exhaled. “I guess so.” She made a mental note to ask him what the hell had happened; he was the resident telepathy expert, or so he seemed to think.

The Lady in White, unaffected, pointed a bony finger toward the child with the iPod. Pan all but squealed in delight.

“The Lady has made her choice!” He clapped. “The child is among the righteous few.”

Whether or not the creature truly took its selections to paradise suddenly didn’t seem to matter all that much. Telling any respectable mother you’re taking her child away from her doesn’t tend to go over well, and it certainly didn’t.

As the little girl reached out toward the Lady, the faint beat of rock ‘n roll thumping through her headphones, her mother let out a primal and guttural shriek and yanked the child back.

“No!” she cried. “I won’t let you take my daughter!” 

Wordlessly, ushers rose from their seats and took hold of the mother by either arm. They held her back while she thrashed and screamed and begged someone to do something, but the room was immobilised with wonder or fear or sheer complacency; River hadn’t quite sorted out which. She wondered briefly if Amelia Pond had thrashed, and screamed, and begged at Demon’s Run, and then she shook that thought right out of her head. It didn’t matter now. Maybe it never mattered at all.

River was neither awstruck nor frightened nor content with the sights unfolding in front of her. She stood up and made a movement toward the child -- the Doctor did, too -- but the Lady was quicker, and as her index finger touched the girl’s temple, they both vanished, iPod and all. The candles flickered back to life, dainty flames bobbing in the breeze, and the crowd began to chatter excitedly about the Lady in White. Only River and the Doctor seemed to notice as the ushers, still smiling, dragged the weeping mother out of the church. 

Together, they rushed out after her, but quickly found that they were alone on the dusty street. 

“What the hell is going on!?” River demanded, crossing her arms. “I’m just about sick of all this not making any damn sense!” 

“I know,” the Doctor agreed. Behind them, people were beginning to filter out of the church. “We have to find out where the Lady in White is taking people. But how!?” 

“We have to get taken,” River suggested. The Doctor laughed, and then read her earnest expression. “You’re serious.” 

“Deadly serious,” she said. “It’s the only way to know. And besides, something happened in the church.” 

The Doctor cocked his head to the side. “Other than a child being torn from her screaming mother?” 

“Yeah,” River swallowed. “I felt the Lady looking at me. In my dreams, I could always tell she was staring at me even though she doesn’t have eyes, and I think she’s staring at me through her mind.” 

“Telepathy,” the Doctor considered this for a moment, and then nodded. “That makes sense. Yeah.” 

“But when I tried to look back at her -- really look, you know? Not with my eyes but with...with whatever else there is to look with...it felt like everything had changed.” A tear came to her eye, and she quickly wiped it away. “I could hear people whispering. Ancient languages, some of them, but others were me, but things I haven't said yet. Or things I said a very long time ago. Or Kovarian, or you. I thought the windows had shattered out, and that a baby was crying, and when I looked down at my hands, it looked like I was about to regenerate, but then the Lady looked away, and everything was normal again.” 

The Doctor startled. “Oh dear.” 

River laughed miserably. “It was all an illusion, or something. I don’t know. There’s something about her, Doctor. Something old, and something wanton, and something tired. I don’t know.” 

“It’s alright,” the Doctor put a hand on her back as they started to follow the crowd back toward the houses. “I say we try to break out tonight and do some exploring. Try to find some answers before anyone else gets taken away -- us included.” 

“Yeah,” River agreed, half-reluctant. “I suppose that sounds like a plan.” 

The Doctor nodded gravely. "And in the meantime, no more mind games." 

River pouted. "My brain, my rules." 

"Unfortunately, no," he said, stern. "You don't know what you're dealing with yet. You have to be careful." 

"Careful's--" 

"Boring, yes, I know," the Doctor rolled his eyes. "But trust me, River. Be careful." 

"Fine," she agreed. "I will be." 

"Promise me." 

"Doctor, I--" 

"River..." 

"Fine," she held out her pinky, intertwining it with his. "I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today was a rough day for me; the newspaper I'm in charge of is being forced to switch to online-only stuff due to our city's quarantine, which means I won't see my friends for a very, very long time. Lots of tears, lots of frustration, but I'm taking solace in writing this, so I hope you all enjoy! Comments and kudos appreciated :) 
> 
> Stay safe, and stay healthy!


	6. Calvin and Hobbes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a short chapter, but hopefully you'll enjoy it! :) River gets to play action hero for a scene or two haha.

“There are rules, you know,” said the Doctor out of silence. They’d been laying in bed doing their best to pretend they were sound asleep, at least until Dor was settled in bed and they could execute Plan Jailbreak. (The name was the Doctor’s idea. River did not find it funny.) 

“Hm?” River glanced at him, confused. “What for?” 

“Telepathy.” 

“Oh, right. Of course there are rules,” she grinned. “If there weren’t rules, how else would I break them?” 

“I’m serious, Professor Song,” scolded the Doctor, giving her nose a condescending tap. 

“Me too,” she caught his finger again and bent it at an angle that almost made him yelp. “My own mind, my own rules. C’mon, Doctor, come off it. I said I’d be careful”

The Doctor, rubbing tenderly at his aching index finger, glowered at her. “You keep saying that, but you don’t understand. I could go around looking into your head all the time, but I never have, except for last night when you gave me permission. You know why?” 

“Because you’re afraid of what you’ll see?” River smirked to hide the truth behind her suggestion. The Doctor promptly shook his head.

“Because I respect you. And you don’t go around violating the privacy of people you respect.” 

“Well, fortunately for me, the list of people I respect is quite short.” 

“River!” 

“Fine, fine,” she gave a dismissive wave. 

“It’s a tool to help you communicate when words aren’t an option. It’s not a way to manipulate your enemies, or win bets, or anything like that. It’s not even a tool for information, unless it absolutely has to be.” 

“You’re no fun.” 

“I’m plenty of fun!” 

“We’re literally in an inexplicable world ruled by an old God where the universal laws of physics don’t always seem to apply, and you’re making time to lecture me?” 

“It isn’t a lecture,” the Doctor protested. “I’m just talking.” 

“Well, stop it.” 

“Stop talking?” 

“Yes.” 

“But I--” 

“Oi!” 

Cross, the Doctor rolled his eyes and shut his mouth. He wasn’t very good at not talking; talking was sort of his thing. But he didn’t have to brood for very long, because once they heard the door to their host’s bedroom click shut and the lights in the hall went out, River stood up. 

“Now’s our chance,” she said, reaching for the doorknob only to find that the door was locked. “Can I see your sonic?” 

The Doctor handed it to her, and she pointed it at the door. Pressing the button didn’t seem to do much of anything; the door remained as tightly sealed as ever. 

“Well, that’s odd,” said the Doctor. “The sonic can open anything.” 

“Except wood.” 

“Well the lock isn’t wood, is it?” 

“No matter,” River tossed him the sonic and made her way toward the window. She opened it up as far as it would open, sticking her head out into the night. The air was cool and crisp and it smelled like autumn, somehow, like fallen leaves and cardamom. The wind tousled her curls as she looked around, though she couldn’t tell what exactly she was looking for. It seemed like the type of thing she’d know when she saw it.

And then she saw it.

The vague silhouette of a thin and frightened woman, arms wrapped around her frame as she stumbled down the road. 

“It’s the mother from the church,” River watched her with a growing sense of sadness. “We have to try to help her.”

“Yeah, I know, but -- wait, what are you doing? River!” 

River had stripped the bed of its sheets and begun to tie their corners tightly together into firm and steady knots. Realising quickly that it wasn’t going to be long enough for her plan, she turned to the Doctor.

“In the closet, there were spare sheets,” she pointed toward the wardrobe. “Be a dear and fetch them for me?” 

“You can’t be serious!” the Doctor protested, though he did as he was told and quickly passed her the sheets. 

“I’m always serious. Or maybe I never am. The world may never know,” she smirked. “C’mon. Help out.” 

Exasperated, the Doctor gestured broadly to the soon-to-be bedsheet ladder and then toward the open window, making a series of confused and astonished grumbles. 

“Haven’t you ever read Calvin and Hobbes?” River teased.

“I don’t know what that means. We’re really going out the window?” 

“We’re going out the window,” River tied a final knot and tossed the rope over her shoulder like a lasso. She pointed at the other end. “Tie that bit to the bedpost unless you want to plummet to our deaths.” 

The Doctor did as he was told; River was the only person in the world who could make him do that.

“This is mad,” said the Doctor, but he was grinning as if madness was a good thing. Maybe for them, it was. In fact, it was the first thing that had felt right since they’d got off that bus.

“Good thing you’re a madman and I’m a psychopath.” River tossed one end of the make-shift rope out the window, watching it dangle about ten feet above the ground. No matter, she thought. She’d fallen from greater heights onto harder things than grass.

“Ladies first,” she climbed up to position herself on the window sill, slipping her legs out the window. It was a tight fit, but prison food -- or rather, a common lack of it -- kept her thinner than she’d like to be, but for once, it looked like it was going to work out in her favour. “What’s that silly thing you always say before you do something stupid and dangerous?” 

“Geronimo?” 

“Yeah, that’s it,” River took a deep breath. “Geronimo!” 

It was a bit anticlimactic, really; the descent was slow and steady, and it didn’t seem to warrant any sort of declaration of stupidity or impulsivity. She was starting to feel a bit silly about halfway down, when suddenly the rope gave a jolt. For a short, terrifying moment, she thought it was ready to snap, but then she looked up to see the Doctor tangling himself in it, reading to make his own way down.

“Oi!” She hissed. “One at a time, Doctor!” 

“Dor is coming!” he replied in a hushed, careful tone. River’s hearts skipped a beat and she muttered a string of expletives under her breath. 

Strange, how uncomfortable things seem to last ages. It felt like she was climbing down for far longer than the thirty-or-so seconds it took for her to realise something wasn’t quite right. Once she’d realised it, she started to listen hard, and that’s when she heard a faint snap followed by the Doctor’s less-than-promising uh-oh. And then she was weightless. It felt like she’d be falling forever. 

Her life had already flashed before her eyes twice in the last twenty-four hours, and that made two more times than she would’ve liked to have seen it. And so rather than dwell on puny what-if’s and inconsequential moments of bliss, of doubt, of fear, of love, she kept her eyes fixed firmly ahead at the sky, counting stars. If she was going to die falling out of a window in some strange little city tucked off in a forgotten pocket of the universe, she was at least going to die looking up. 

The ground smacked the air out of her lungs, and a firm whack to her tailbone sent a sharp ache radiating up her spine. But when she let out her first breath since landing in Dor’s gardenia bush, she realised it didn’t hurt to suck in the next batch of air -- and it tasted pleasantly like flowers. She did a quick inventory; she could feel her legs and her toes in her trainers, and that was a perfectly good sign. 

At some point, she’d shut her eyes, and she opened them just in time to see the Doctor come barreling down on top of her. He landed with a winded ooph, his knee digging uncomfortably into River’s gut and his hand pressing painfully against her chest. 

“You alright?” he groaned. River gave him a rough shove off of her. The Doctor, knocked on his back in the grass, took that as a yes.

Just as River was taking in the fact that they’d both managed to avoid injury beyond a few scrapes and bruises, the broken bedpost, still tethered to a rope of sheets, came out of what absolutely seemed like thin air and smacked her hard right between the eyes.

Now that hurt. 

“God dammit!” she groaned, hands pressed instinctively over her bleeding nose.

Panicked, the Doctor grabbed either of her shoulders and steadied her.

“Are you alright!? River!” 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she waved his worried hands away and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Ow! Damn! Bedpost!” Her vision had gone blurry and white around the edges, and she felt for a moment as if she might faint. If she wasn’t concussed before from hitting the desk, she certainly was now. But there was hardly time for feeling sick. She shut her eyes and took a few deep breaths, and once she was sure she wouldn’t pass out, she fought back the nausea in her stomach and sat up.

“Sorry for landing on you,” the Doctor straightened River’s jumper and huffed out a sigh, looking up at the window they’d fallen from. It looked awfully small in the distance. 

“It’s alright,” agitated, River clambered to her feet, offering him her hand and jerking him up with surprising strength. “Not like you had much of a choice. Gravity’s the real bastard to blame, here.” 

She heard Dor let out a shrill cry from the second-floor window, and she grabbed the Doctor’s hand.

“C’mon!” she yanked him toward the shadows. “Let’s go!”


	7. Icarus

They ran until the vague shadow of the house had faded into the background’s pale grey, hand in clammy hand. River scanned the darkness for any sign of the mother -- for any sign of anyone, really -- but it seemed that the night was empty.

“You think Dor’s still on our tail?” the Doctor asked. River shrugged.

“I doubt it. I don’t think she’d come outside at night; she seemed convinced it was dangerous.” 

“Do you think she was right?” 

“God, I hope so,” she turned to the Doctor with a grin, and as a swell of butterflies rose up in his stomach, he smiled, too. 

There was something about her, he thought. Something about the way she looked as she smiled in the moonlight, with blood on her face and dirt on her clothes and adventure in her eyes. Something profound. Something beautiful. Like a superhero whose superness wasn’t granted from a magic rock or a spider bite, but from a life full of living, and hurting, and loving, and dying. He’d seen snippets on it all in her mind, though he did his best not to look at things he knew she’d rather he didn’t see. But what he did see had pulled him deeper into the swirling cesspool called love. It wasn’t exactly like it was in films or in old books, but it was just as tender, in its own way.

She’d started walking up ahead, and it took him a minute to notice. He jogged to catch up.

“Where are you going?” 

“We need to find the woman who lost her child.” 

“Do you think they’ll hurt her?” 

“Well, I certainly think they’ll try. What do you think happened to Har?” 

“No idea,” the Doctor shuddered as a cold wind blew in heavy grey clouds. The moonlight was gone, and their path had been cast in shadows. Love might not have been much like films or old books, but in the Doctor’s experience, horror usually hit the nail right on the head.

“Wait,” River stretched out her arm to stop the Doctor from going any further. “Give me your sonic. Look.”

She pointed it at the ground and switched on the torch; a crimson trail of blood glistened in the light. It seemed to lead away from the church -- whose steeple stood out against the night sky, ever-watchful -- and creep toward the city limits. The place Dor had specifically warned them not to go. Go figure, River thought. 

“What do you reckon the odds are that someone was painting out here?” she muttered, following the trail deeper into the night. 

“Well, I’m an optimist,” replied the Doctor. “I’m giving it a 50/50 chance, painter or murderer.” 

“Or murderee.” 

“And I suppose you’re a glass-half-empty girl, hm?” 

“Depends on what’s in the glass.” 

With a quiet laugh, the Doctor marched on after her. The tree branches swayed and creaked in the wind, and off to the side of the narrowing dirt path, tall yellow grass bowed to the breeze. It smelled a bit like rain, which usually, the Doctor wouldn’t have minded. But Har’s comment about not drinking the water, followed almost immediately by his inexplicable disappearance, didn’t quite sit well with him. 

“Doctor,” River muttered. “I’d like to tell you something, and I don’t want you to reply.” 

Brows knit, the Doctor nodded. “You can tell me anything you’d like. Always. I won’t ever judge you.” 

“Save the sentimental rubbish,” River rolled her eyes. “I’ve been seeing a therapist at Stormcage. It’s required, but I don’t mind it as much as I thought I would.” 

The Doctor’s silence was met with an expectant stare.

“Well?” River urged. 

“You told me not to reply.” 

“Well, I’ve changed my mind,” River stared at the blood trail on the ground, as if to ensure they were still going the right way. But there was only one way to go; she was watching the ground so she didn’t have to watch the Doctor’s expression. 

“I think it’s great,” he gave her shoulder an awkward but loving pat. “An objective voice is never a bad idea. You’d be amazed at the things you can learn about yourself when someone from the outside takes a look in. It’s like watching someone through the windows of an old house; it’s hard to tell that the house is falling apart when you spend all your time inside of it tidying up one little mess at a time.” 

River smiled. She liked the analogy, though she’d hardly fancy herself a house in need of repairs. She wondered briefly if that’s how the Doctor saw her -- or maybe if that’s how he saw himself, sometimes, when the night was quiet, and dark, and empty.

“Well,” she said, eager to fill the oncoming silence with something better than the crickets and cicadas buzzing in the trees. “If you ask Luna -- that’s her name, the therapist -- she’d be quite eager to tell you I’m an adrenaline fiend addicted to danger because my childhood wasn’t up to par.” 

“You did just jump out of a second-floor window using a technique you read about in Calvin and Hobbes.” 

River laughed. “Yeah. I guess I did, eh?” 

“Well, happy childhoods are overrated, anyway,” the Doctor kicked at a pebble in the road. “I don’t know anyone even remotely interesting who’s never been sad, or lonely, or afraid.” 

It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote, _show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy._ Though River didn’t fancy herself a hero nor a tragedy -- she figured she was more of a villain and a lost cause -- the Doctor would say one’s past hardly mattered when it came time for value judgements and ethos. What mattered was the here and the now, he always told her. Good stories rarely started happy, and true stories rarely ended there; but the bits in between were what mattered. Icarus had started his life trapped and ended it in rapid descent, but for awhile, he knew what it felt like to fly.

A muffled sound came from up ahead, and it stripped the moment of its tenderness. River and the Doctor quickly sobered up, sharing a cautious glance. 

“You think there’s wildlife here?” the Doctor asked. River shook her head.

“I don’t know, but I do know I didn’t come all this way just to get eaten by a bear.” She pointed the sonic ahead and clicked on its scanner. “There’s one life form up there, but it’s fading rapidly.” 

Through the green glowing torchlight, River saw a thick layer of fog slipping through the holes of a chain-link fence. A rusted _keep out_ sign reflected the light back to her, but she had every intention of ignoring it.

“It looks like some sort of rubbish tip,” River’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Smells like one, too. And it looks like the trail of blood ends here.”

“Odd,” the Doctor muttered. “Where did all this fog come from?” 

“Give me a boost over the fence and we’ll find out,” River nudged him. Figuring that arguing would get him nowhere, the Doctor knelt down. As River climbed onto his back and tugged herself up over the barricade, he reckoned he was just lucky she wasn’t wearing heels. 

Her trainers touched down with a crunch on a gravel-covered ground, and she quickly helped the Doctor over into the tip. Piles of rotting garbage towered toward the sky, with everything from food waste to wood with boreholes and termite tracks. 

“The pie Dor and Har baked a few days ago is still warm on the desk, and none of the food in the fridge has as much as a bruise on it, but all this stuff has gone bad,” the Doctor observed. “Like the life has been drained from it.” 

River pointed the torch at his face. “Do you believe in vampires?” 

“Vampires?” 

“Yeah. Fangs, black cloaks, all that. They drink blood.” 

“I know what a vampire is, River,” the Doctor deadpanned. “It’s just a human manifestation of fear of the Other.” 

“The concept exists in more cultures than just humanity,” River told him, her inner archaeologist itching for a chance to lecture. “Galactic legends are based largely on the Absorbaloffs, creatures from the planet Clom who absorb living things to survive and learn.” 

The Doctor nodded darkly. “I’m quite familiar with the lore.” 

“Maybe something like that is going on here,” River shined the torch around, wincing at the stench of decaying meat. “Watertown and the Lady in White survive at the expense of other things that have to die.” 

The very idea of it all put a pit in the Doctor’s stomach, but it did make perfect sense. “You think that’s why the Lady selects people from the crowd? Not to take them to paradise, but to...drink their blood?” 

River shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” 

They made their way through the strange fog. It reminded River of a graveyard, and in many ways, she figured it was. 

Behind a pile of rubbish, something moved, sending a tower of trash toppling over with a clatter that could’ve stopped River’s hearts. From the darkness came the mother, eyes wide and pleading, hands glistening red with blood. The Doctor and River turned to her, startled. 

“It’s just you,” River breathed a sigh of relief. “We’ve been looking for you.” 

“You shouldn’t be out here,” she whispered, tears staining the grime on her cheeks. “The monsters...they’re everywhere!” 

She doubled over and started to sob, and River rushed to her aid, passing the sonic along to the Doctor. Hands on her shoulders to steady her, River moved strands of matted hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear.

“I’m sorry they took your daughter,” she told her gently. “But we’re going to try to find her, and all the others, too. What’s your name? Are you hurt?” River inspected her hands. Her fingernails were mangled and her knuckles were bloody. 

“My name is Nina,” she sniffled. “I was digging.” 

“Why, Nina?” the Doctor started to scan her with the screwdriver. “What were you looking for?” 

“The ghosts!” Nina wailed, tearing herself away from River and falling onto her back. 

“She’s poisoned,” the Doctor said gravely. “A neurotoxin. She’s having hallucinations.” 

“Did someone hurt you?” River reached out to her again, but Nina recoiled. 

“The water,” Nine whispered through her tears. “It gives life, and it takes life away. The ghosts! They’re coming!” She shrieked, scurrying backward and pointing at nothing. “I always knew they’d come back for me. I-I always knew!” 

“Nina, you’re seeing things,” River told her. “You have to let us help you. Doctor, is there an antidote?” 

He inspected the sonic. “It’s a mutated petrodotoxinite, a toxin found in--” 

“In fish in the Canis Major Overdensity, I know, but petrodotoxinite poisoning doesn’t usually produce hallucinations!” 

“I said it was mutated!” 

“Is there an antidote!?” 

“Time!” the Doctor was beginning to feel frantic. “It’ll eventually work its way out of the system, but usually poisoning victims have to be sedated because the poisoning affects them differently, based on whether they have an adrenaline response or an endorphin release. If they’re happy, they have grand visions, but if they’re frightened, they see things so horrible they usually go into cardiac arrest. And repeated exposure, like drinking it every day...I have no idea, River, I’m not a bloody chemist!

“Alright, alright,” River reached out to Nina once again. “Nina, you need to try to stay calm. I know you’re seeing things -- terrible things -- but they aren’t real. They’re just...just bad dreams.” 

“Do you ever wonder where bad dreams come from?” Nina whispered, voice shrill. “Why they’re always there when you close your eyes? Maybe they’re waiting. Watching. Closeby, never far. Waiting for a moment of mental weakness so they can--” 

She saw something no one else could ever see, and she flung herself backward with a piercing cry. Hands clutching her chest, she screamed until there was no air left in her lungs, until her throat gave out, until the light went from her eyes and she flopped down into the gravel like a ragdoll tossed to the side. River crawled over to her, checking for a pulse.

“Damn it,” she cursed, cracking her knuckles and starting CPR.

“River,” the Doctor’s stare fell to the ground. 

“Pan said the goal of Watertown was to eliminate fear as to enter paradise,” River didn’t stop compressions. “But it’s all in everyone’s head, the good, the bad, the ugly, it’s all nightmares and visions of grandeur.”

“Once the heart arrests, the toxin speeds up tissue decay,” the Doctor reached out and touched her shoulder.

“C’mon, Nina,” River whispered. “C’mon.” 

“She’s dead,” the Doctor knelt beside her. “River, she’s gone.” 

Defeated, River stilled. She stared at the corpse with the tired grief of someone for whom death was no stranger. And like a switch had been flipped, grief turned to rage. 

“I’ll burn this place,” she said blankly, emotionlessly, standing up and dusting off her knees. “Innocent people shouldn’t be plucked from their lives and scared to death in the name of some false god. Or even some real god, for that matter.” 

“I know,” the Doctor put an arm around her and gave her a quick squeeze. “What do you think she was digging for?” 

River examined Nina’s torn-up hands. “I don’t know. But this isn’t enough blood to account for the trail we’ve followed here.” She peered through the fog, eyes squinting. Through the dense grey, she swore she saw something moving, a shape taking form. But she rubbed her eyes and blinked a few times, and found that nothing was there. 

She took a step toward it, her stare fixed ahead. 

“Did you see something move?” 

The Doctor shook his head. “I wasn’t looking. Be careful.” 

River continued to walk toward the denser corner of fog. In pale wisps, it started to cover the ground. It seemed almost sentient in the way it wrapped around her ankles. 

She took another step, and when her trainer met unexpected resistance, she tripped over something stiff and tumbled forward into the gravel. Into the fog. The Doctor called out to her, rushing forward. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine!” River reassured, but in the light of the Doctor’s sonic, she caught a glimpse of what she’d tripped over: A hand, hardened with rigor mortis and blue in death. The rest of its arm was buried beneath the gravel, along with, she assumed, the body it was attached to. 

Horrified, River was beginning to understand what exactly Nina had been digging for.

As if an unspoken truth had been shared between the pair, she and the Doctor began to dig, too, pushing rocks and dirt and bits of rubbish aside until, with raw, bleeding knuckles, they managed to unearth the leathery, wrinkled face of Gladys, purple lips parted and yellowed eyes widened into a state of perpetual terror.

“God,” the Doctor moaned, looking away. River shook her head.

“Godless,” she corrected, jaw set and lips tight. She snatched the sonic from his hands and set it to scan the gravel. When she read back what it had to say, she dropped it, stunned. 

“There’s hundreds,” she turned to the Doctor, eyes wide and damp. “Hundreds of bodies under the gravel, Doctor. They weren’t killed by the water; they were beaten.” 

A chill ran down the Doctor’s spine, and gooseflesh erected along his arms. They were standing in a graveyard, a cemetery of nameless bones. He wondered how many people had been taken from their daily lives, only to die alone, in terror or in pain. An icy pang of sadness skewered both his hearts at once, and judging by the look on River’s face, he knew she was feeling just as upset.

“The little girl,” he startled, snatching back the sonic and scanning the gravel for signs of life. “She was taken recently enough. Maybe she’s alive. Maybe she’s--” 

He stilled at the sight of something square and silver poking up out of the gravel. Crouching down, the Doctor lifted from the rocks an iPod. The screen was cracked, and there was a splatter of blood across its display.

He exhaled sharply, breath tinged with tremolo. River put a hand on his shoulder and peered up into the gathering clouds. If her cheeks were wet when she looked back at him, she’d blame it on the rain. 

“She was just a child,” the Doctor whispered. “Who murders children? She couldn’t have hurt anyone. Anything she could’ve said about what she’d seen would hardly have incriminated anyone; it all could’ve just as easily been written off as the beautiful, silly, horrific imagination of a frightened, lonely little kid.” 

He looked up at River, tear tracks parting the grime on his cheeks. River knelt down and pulled him into a hug; she never did trust a hug, but it was the best way to hide her face.

She could hardly bear to watch him grieve the lost little girl like he’d mourned his own children so long ago; he’d say there were no parallels between then and now, but she knew. She saw it in the way his shoulders slumped and his eyes glazed over; she knew him. And she knew his red-hot, sharp-blade grief as intimately as she knew his love and wonder.

A pit of rage boiled in her gut that could mirror the fury of Hell. Whoever was responsible for the horrors of the rubbish tip and of Watertown in general had hurt hundreds of innocent people -- an old lady bound for Florida, a mother in search of her child, and a little girl doing her best to keep the nightmares at bay with music. But what really made River seethe was the fact that now, they’d hurt the Doctor. Her Doctor. They’d made him cry, and she’d make them pay if it meant hunting them across the cosmos with a carving knife and a bottle of gin to pass the time.

Dejected, the Doctor tossed the iPod back to the ground. River picked it up and tucked the device into her pocket; she couldn’t bear to leave it behind to rot with the rest of the rubbish. Not when it had meant so much to a small girl.

“The fog, I know where it comes from,” she stated firmly, desperate to break the silence weighing down on them. “It’s like a fog machine. An organic fog machine.”

“River,” said the Doctor, in that faux-calm tone that he tended to used when he’d just realised something was wrong and didn’t want to start a panic. He’d pulled himself together as quickly as he’d fallen apart, but River was in no mood for bad news or deep discussion, and she felt dangerously close to losing what little stoicism and dignity she’d managed to hold onto. She ignored him instead, standing up and scanning the ground to confirm her chemical theory.

“Glycerol, found in the triglyceride structure of oils and fats -- the rotting flesh breaking down -- mixes with water vapour in the air.” 

“Yes, but River, think about--” 

“Water and glycerol combine with mineral oil -- alkanes and cycloalkanes -- found in natural oil, probably underground, and produce fog. No ancient gods, no vampires. No ghosts. Just--” 

The Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. 

“Yes, you’re correct, you’re clever, but you aren’t listening to yourself,” he warned. “Water vapour, water and glycerol, _water_ , River. The neurotoxin. And we’ve been breathing it in the whole time.” 

River’s stomach dropped, and her hearts leapt into her throat. 

“Oh,” her crestfallen expression mirrored the Doctor’s exactly. “ _Oh_.”


	8. Killing God

“We aren’t human, and that’ll work to our benefit,” the Doctor was saying as they traced their steps back toward Watertown. “The toxin will affect you slower than it affected them, and it’ll affect me slower than you, if at all. So as long as we can stay calm, as long as we can separate nightmares from reality, I think we’ll be alright long enough to make a plan.”

River was only half-listening. She absently thumbed the iPod in her pocket, and wondered briefly about the worst that could happen. What’s the worst her mind could show her? What nightmare could be worse than the things she’d seen already? 

“Maybe we shouldn’t go back,” the Doctor said, sensing her unease. “If we turn around and just keep walking, maybe we’ll eventually come to a medical outpost or something. You can get medicine, and--”

River gave him a cold and incredulous look. “And let all those people die? Doctor, who are you?” 

Wounded, he sighed. “Once you're safe, I'd come back, of course. I’m just trying to look out for you, that’s all.” 

“Well, don’t,” she snapped. “Don’t be a coward on my account. If you want to run, by all means, Doctor, run. But this place has made an enemy of me, and my enemies don’t live very long lives once they’ve made me cross.”

She pushed passed him and walked a few paces ahead, but she could feel his eyes on her back. Luna’s words came back to her like a dull echo of a throb in her head: _The bad girl persona. The fearless heroine. The femme fatale. Layers of protective mental clothing, dear, all guarding the frightened child huddled deep inside._

Yes, she was frightened, but she was angry, too. She was always just a little bit afraid and just a little bit enraged, but this was different; a child was dead amid the gravel, and someone was going to pay for that.

“River,” the Doctor called to her, and she stilled. His hand found hers and squeezed. The sun was rising over the trees, and the black, rain-bearing sky had turned a soft shade of purple. It was almost calm, but the stillness lay heavy against the dawn, and ominous, nameless things seemed to lurk in the shadows.

“We can’t turn our backs on these people,” she said firmly, fighting back the feeling that she was being watched by eyes far less kind than the Doctor’s. “They’re brainwashed. Do you know what it’s like to be told your whole life that the world is one way -- one very, specific way -- only to find that it isn’t that way at all? That it’s very different, in fact. That you’ve been lied to; coldly and deliberately lied to. That someone you thought you trusted, thought you loved, had been manipulating you all along?” 

“No, I don’t,” said the Doctor, delicately and with as much love as he could muster. “But I know that you do.” 

“I don’t blame you. Not for any of it.” 

“I know.” 

“And I’m sorry that--” 

The Doctor shook his head. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” 

River nodded. She wasn’t sure if she was going to say anything else, to build upon the gentle vagueness, but if she was going to, she wouldn’t have had the time; up ahead of them, a figure had emerged. River looked to the Doctor for assurance that it was actually there -- she didn’t know when the neurotoxin would start affecting her, or how -- but his eyes had gone wide, too.

“There aren’t many rules,” came Pan’s voice. He took a step closer, and his baggy-jumper smile seemed even more unnerving in the morning’s liminal light. “But you’ve broken them all.” His smile faded, and River learned that the only thing more terrifying than a smile that was too wide was the frown that matched it.

She pulled the iPod from her pocket and held it up as proof. 

“Your paradise is a lie, Pan,” she declared. “There are hundreds of bodies under the gravel in the landfill. But you know that, don’t you? You put them there.”

“Non-believers are few and far between,” he shook his head mournfully. “But those who let fear rule their lives go mad.” 

“Those people weren’t killed by the hallucinogens in your water,” the Doctor countered. “They were beaten.” 

Pan looked confused. “I fear you’ve been plagued by the water madness, too. What you’ve seen isn’t real, my friends.” 

River gestured again to the iPod. “This is true. This is real,” she affirmed. It was her only evidence that what she had seen could be trusted, but it was all the proof she needed to believe her own mind. "You can stop lying now."

“No one else will believe you,” Pan cocked his head to the side, a cruel smile returning to his lips. “And if they do, you’ll scare them to death. Literally.” 

River and the Doctor shared a startled look. Foolishly, they hadn’t considered that. Pan took a step toward them, and they took a step back.

“Watertown has been operating since time immemorial,” he growled. “Our God sustains it; she makes it so that nothing ever rots in the city. Nothing ever dies. But beyond its borders is the Land of Death and Bones, where things decay. The Land is getting closer to us, spreading, like an infection,” he snarled the word, gesturing to dead flowers along the path. “The Lady requires nobility and pureness of spirit in her sacrifices. But the worlds have changed, my friends. Not even the child possessed the goodness required for sacrifice.” 

“And so you killed her,” the Doctor accused. Pan’s laugh made his blood boil.

“I didn’t kill her. Her sin, did.” 

“You sick--” 

The Doctor held River back, his own hand trembling with rage. But they were learning. Pan was telling them what they’d sought out to know. 

“So the people the Lady rejects,” he posited. “You take them to the place where things decay, and you kill them.” 

“Blood sacrifice,” Pan replied evenly, as if it had been obvious. “If I were to let them go, they’d share what they’d learned about the Lady in White with the others, and then madness and fear would be a plague of locusts upon our lives.”

“What is it that they’ve learned that would scare them so much?” the Doctor pried.

“That it’s all a lie,” River accused. “That there is no paradise. That those people die so you can live forever. An eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind, Pan.” 

“This is heresy.” 

“This is cruelty!” River countered, gesturing broadly to the border between Watertown and rot. “I mistook you for a believer -- a fool, but a man of faith -- but you’re not. You’re...you’re a con man, whose biggest profit is a life everlasting.” 

“The titles of Keeper of the God and Greeter has been in my family for ages,” he hissed. “We’re the selected few who know the truth. And lately, people in the city have been aging. They’ve never done that before. I tell them it’s the beauty of nature and time, but what it really is...is the closeness to death. The Lady newly refuses to take sacrifices of her own, and so I take them for her, but it isn’t enough. Her grasp on the city is...deficient.”

“That's because she isn’t a God,” River insisted, defensive. “She’s one of the last remaining native life forms on this planet. Has it ever occurred to you that she may just want to stop?” 

“Stop?” Pan repeated, confused. 

“Yes! The killing, the draining, the foolish rituals, the pomp and circumstance...your belief doesn’t glorify her -- it traps her,” River took a step toward him, fists balled at her sides. 

She decided then to try something; something the Doctor had told her was against the rules. She thought up every horrid nightmare she’d ever had -- Kovarian, the Silence, the pressure of a lake in the desert, an impossible choice with no good options -- and she focused very hard on Pan. 

_Can I put thoughts into people’s heads, too?_

_Why would you want to do that?_

_You never know when it might come in handy._

She didn’t know what she ought to do or how she ought to do it; it felt a bit like getting on a racing bike before ever bothering to learn how to ride a tricycle. But when the Doctor had taken her ice skating on the Thames, she’d learned that she only lost her balance when she started to worry about falling. And so, she figured she’d do what she did then, and come out of the gates fast and quick and fearless.

Pan was preaching again, going on about the mercy of the Lady in White and the impurity of the rest of the mortal universe. The Doctor was arguing with him, while River was doing her very best to think about all the things she’d tried to never think about -- every bad dream, every buried memory, every monster she’d ever faced. And when Pan’s eye twitched, she knew it was worth it. 

The Doctor glanced over at River, hit suddenly with a bout of sourceless knowledge; somehow, he knew what she was doing. Brilliant, clever, brave, stupid River, he thought.

“Don’t,” he warned her, but when had she ever listened?

“You cannot possibly understand,” continued Pan, but his voice wavered. He looked at River, who simply lifted a brow and shrugged. 

“What can’t we understand?” 

“The madness,” Pan muttered, not so much in reply, but rather in acknowledgement of the monsters in his head.

“What’s the matter, Pan?” River cooed. “Are you frightened?” 

“O-Only the...only the guilty need to be afraid,” Pan stammered, backing away.

“You’re a murderer,” River approached him, sending him every dreadful pang of guilt she’d ever felt. All that grief, all that terrible responsibility...she felt something coil in her own chest. It was almost too much, but her rage was petrol on the fire in her heart. 

“River,” the Doctor reached for her arm, but she stepped out his reach. She thought about her nightmares, her memories, and the fine line between the two, and she projected it all onto the man standing before them.

“Did that little girl beg for her life, Pan?” she asked him coldy, cruelly, with a lack of soul the Doctor knew she was capable of, but had done his best to never see. “How old do you reckon she was? Ten? Twelve? And you intend to tell me it was her fault the Old God wouldn’t eat her? That she was too impure?” 

Pan shook his head, lips pursed and eyes wet. “I do the Lord’s work.” 

“Hell is empty,” River quoted. “And all the devils are here.” 

The preacher dropped to his knees and covered his ears; River had put enough fear in his head to trigger an adrenaline response, which triggered the neurotoxin, which triggered a frenzied panic. He looked up, eyes like saucers, pupils dilating as he seemed to see something that wasn’t there. He fell backward onto his arse and attempted to clamber up to his feet, but he slipped in mud and hit the ground again -- hard. 

“Let him go, River,” the Doctor urged. “Just clear your head. Just breathe. You can’t get yourself all worked up; the toxin is in you, too. If you stop now, Pan might survive.” 

“I don’t want him to,” she admitted, forcing her way deeper into his mind and probing it. This was power, she thought. This was ultimate power. She could see everything he knew, feel everything he felt...the reverence, the love, the devotion, the creeping sense of doubt, the burden of truth, the desperation of secrets never told.

Tucked into a corner of his brain was a privileged childhood, a mother who stayed home and a preacher for a father. Their family had worshipped the Lady in White for generations, the men of which were the Greeters, the Preachers, the Keepers. and it was the second-greatest privilege to tend to the Lady. The first greatest was to be killed by her. Pan’s father had been. And his grandfather, and great-grandfather, and great-great grandfather, and every father before that.

To die was to join the Lady in the Fifth Realm of Paradise, or so they told everyone else. It’s the lie they’d all been taught to believe, the grand, faux, toxin-induced vision they saw as they drew their final breaths. Only the Preachers were permitted to know the truth -- that nothing real awaited them beyond death, but that those who died at the Lady’s hand were sacrificing themselves so that the living may continue to live forever. It was not a society built upon the reverence of God, but rather, on the crumbling foundation built by those who feared death. And as long as they were secretly always a little afraid -- but never afraid enough to call upon madness -- they’d be spared the Lady’s hand.

Memories of the church’s better days -- the Lady in White summoned a “lucky” few to her, drained their mental energy and hungrily ate. Then, when the soul was gone and the light in their eyes had dimmed, she ate their physical energy; when she raised a bony hand toward her victims, their flesh began to melt from their bones, snowmen in the springtime, and their cartilage and bone turned to dust kicked up in the Lady’s wind. 

But she hadn’t been eating lately. Pan brought willing victims into her shrine, but she only turned away, ashamed of her choice. Pan feared she was saving her appetite for something bigger. Something stronger. The last of the Pan preacher bloodline. And he did not want to die. Not now. Not yet. Not ever.

But from the crevices of Pan’s throbbing mind, the Lady turned to face River, as if she wasn’t quite a memory, but a sentient implant affixed to the skull. River felt a wave of timeless agony wash over her -- a greif, unbearable; a fear, unknowable; a fatigue, unendurable.

River realised then what she should’ve realised much sooner; the nightmares the Lady had put in her mind were not to scare her, but to share with her a feeling she couldn’t put into words. There was no right choice. No moral decision. But indecision meant all would die inadvertently, or a few would die, one by one, at her hand. It could only go on for so long.

River’s eyes fluttered shut, and the next thing she knew, she was opening them, staring up into the Doctor’s. 

“Are you alright!?” he fretted, helping her up from the mud. “You fainted!”

“Yeah,” River rubbed her temples. They ached, but her head felt oddly empty with the connection to Pan severed. “What about him?” 

The Doctor nodded toward his corpse, still and stiff a few paces away. “Heart attack.” 

“Scared him to death,” River knew it was wrong to feel proud, but nevertheless, she did. “That expression won’t ever be the same.” 

“Tormenting him was enough,” he said, his tone careful, yet cold enough to let River know he wasn’t happy with her. “You didn’t have to kill him. I thought at first that you didn’t know how to break the link. But you knew perfectly well what you were doing, and you could’ve stopped.” 

River shook her head. “Mercy might be your style, sweetie, but it isn’t mine.” 

“You promised me you’d be careful with telepathy,” the Doctor jabbed a finger into her chest. “You are many, many things, but I’ve never known you to be a liar before.” 

River let out a mirthless laugh. “Then maybe you don’t know me at all!” 

“Maybe I don’t!” the Doctor turned and began to walk off toward the city, leaving River standing alone in the clearing. 

Oh no you don’t, she thought.

“Oi!” She jogged to catch up to him. “You’re the man who destroyed whole worlds. You’re the man who can send armies running at the mention of your name! You don’t get the right to lecture me on goodness. You--” 

“This isn’t about me!” he turned back to her, vicious.

“Oh, it’s always about you, Doctor,” River told him coldly. “Isn’t it?” 

“What is that supposed to mean?” 

“This is who we are, Doctor,” she tossed her hands up in the air. “The man who destroys and the girl born to kill him. We were never much for labels, us, but history only remembers the action, doesn’t it? When an archaeologist digs up a mass grave, do you think she’ll ever know if the murderer lamented how hard it was for him to commit genocide? No. But she’ll know for damn sure that he’d killed. Murder is murder. You’ve killed. I’ve killed. The reasons rarely matter in posterity. You say you’ve killed out of necessity, with a heavy heart, and that I kill out of a desire for fucking bloodlust--”

“I would never imply that! You aren’t evil!” the Doctor threw his hands up in exasperation. “You aren’t mad. You aren’t--” 

“Stop!” River cut him off. “I am so sick of everyone trying to tell me what I am or what I’m not!” She turned to him with a pleading look buried beneath the rage, a look that revealed something desperate for autonomy, for self-determination, for choice. “Maybe I’m a brilliant scientist with a heart of gold, or maybe I’m a cold-blooded killer with no heart at all. The truth is, I don’t know what I am because no one’s ever given me a single chance to find out for myself! It’s always been about what someone else thought I could be, or...or what someone else decided I was meant to be. But when all is said and done, Doctor, I have no idea who or what I am!” 

Her shout lingered in the air between them, red-rimmed eyes damp and focused. She seemed feral in one way and utterly composed in another; a strange combination that couldn’t have been more aptly fitting. She was made of opposing forces in stark and diametric opposition; love and hate, fear and courage, hope and despair, fire and ice. 

Every time the Doctor thought he understood what she needed, it turned out that she needed the exact opposite. If he thought she needed to be loved, it turned out she needed to be left alone. If he thought she needed to be taught, it turned out she needed to teach. If he thought she needed structure, she craved chaos. If he thought she needed reassurance, it turned out she needed to sit in silence with her insecurity until she understood what it meant for her.

He resisted the urge to feel irked or irritated; it wasn’t her fault. Odds were, in fact, that she didn’t know what she needed, either. 

“You’re right,” said the Doctor after a pregnant pause. “I’m sorry.” 

River nodded, having taken a moment to breathe. “Me too.” 

And that was the end of that.

She paced over toward Pan, crouching down to examine the body. 

“I looked into his mind, and a lot of things make sense, now,” she said, her composure tightly resealed. She eyed him with a chill that could’ve made Hell freeze over. “The nightmares, the Lady in White. She’s tired of having to make difficult choices all the time; either she survives by killing one victim at a time, or she doesn’t choose anyone and they all eventually get murdered, or go into cardiac arrest.” 

“A vicious cycle,” the Doctor sighed.

“Mhmm,” River looked up into the sky -- now pink in the final moments of sunrise -- and then back at the Doctor. “And I think she’s ready for it all to stop.” 

Doctor had the feeling he knew what she meant, and he wished he didn’t. 

“Everything ends, Doctor. Everything dies.”

A glance back toward the rubbish tip drove her point home; the fog had started to dissipate, making visible towering piles of forgotten things hidden away behind the fence. Some of the flowers along the path had begun to wilt. The trees dropped the very last of their orange leaves. There was something beautiful about the still sadness, the melancholy order of things that was, simply put, natural. She looked over her shoulder at Pan’s corpse, at the permanent lines etched into his temporary skin. She let out a slow and shaky breath.

“Watertown is on the verge of a meltdown,” she said. “The Lady in White sustains it all, but she doesn’t want to anymore. She wants to go wherever dead things go, and I think she brought us here to help her along.” River worked through a series of shuffled puzzle pieces in her mind -- the nightmares, the memories in her head that weren’t her own (and the memories that decidedly were), the overlapping voices she’d heard when she’d tried to look into the Lady’s mind...it all made sense. Shakespeare couldn’t have written a better tragedy. 

“There’s got to be another way.” 

“There isn’t, Doctor.” 

“No one else has to die, River!” 

“ _Everybody knows that everybody dies. No, no, not everyone. Not everyone is so lucky._ That’s what the Lady said to me, in my head. She wants this. She wants to stop, Doctor, and your moral high horse is keeping her trapped in the very same way that Pan’s family’s traditions have been trapping her for centuries.” 

The Doctor was silent. He knew that she was right. Of course she was right. She was River Song.

“So that’s what we do,” River clasped her hands together. “We kill God.” 

Solemnly, the Doctor nodded. “We kill God.”


	9. No Good Deed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor finds a document that finally reveals the identity of the Lady in White — and a history interwoven too deeply with his own.

Morning had drifted down over Watertown like a clean bedsheet, fresh and warm. River and the Doctor reached the city just in time to see the masses being marched to church. They would enter to find their preacher gone, and that simply wouldn’t do.

“How do you reckon Har knew about the water?” the Doctor asked. It wasn’t the most important question, but it was one that didn’t stress him out too badly. The real important question -- how they were to kill a timeless God without scaring the entire population to death, literally -- made his stomach tie itself in knots. 

“I don’t think we’ll ever know,” River replied. “He’s probably buried somewhere under that gravel with too many others to count.” 

The Doctor reached out and touched her arm, pausing in his gait. They stilled, and she looked at him with mingled confusion and annoyance. “What?” 

“Are you alright?” 

River snatched her arm away. “We don’t have time for stupid questions, sweetie. You ought to be asking what we do about Pan. The congregation will be expecting him.” 

“Well, that’s easy,” the Doctor said. “We do the same thing he’s been doing to them all along: we lie. Rule one, you know.”

“Dor knows something’s wrong,” River reminded him. 

“And I think she has for a long while, now.” 

“She saw us running.” 

“And if she's smart and careful, which I think she is, she’ll know better than to bring it up.” 

“You’re putting a lot of faith in a pretty big if.”

“Well, these people have been putting a lot of faith in a pretty big hoax, so I suppose we’re even.”

They came to Dor’s house, and to their mild surprise, it was unlocked.

“She’s almost certainly at the church, but let’s see if we can find out what’s been going on,” said the Doctor, making his way inside. 

It certainly wasn’t River’s first break-in -- if it even counted as a break-in if the doors were unlocked -- but she had that same pit of nervousness in her stomach. Usually, anxiety came with a rush of adrenaline that urged her onward, that pushed her to run so quickly her fear couldn’t catch up. But she couldn’t afford adrenaline at the moment, and so she squared her shoulders and cleared her throat, and she marched on.

“I doubt she’d have a manuscript laying around entitled ‘Everything Wrong with Watertown and Why,’” she quipped, climbing the stairs. “Everything here is just as one might expect it to be, because that’s how the Lady designed it. But she didn’t account for you and I when she’d made it.” 

“Well, maybe if we expect answers,” called the Doctor from the floor below. “We’ll find something.” 

River chuckled. “If we could will solutions into existence, life would be far easier.” 

She paused in the entranceway to their bedroom, stunned into stillness by a sense of unease. On the dresser sat the pie, still perfectly warm and perfectly perfumed, but it was moving. Rather, something within it was moving, wriggling around just beneath its crust. 

Curious, River took a step closer to it, suddenly aware of the world in a way that felt wrong. Her heartbeat was a drumline in her head, and the dull thump of her trainers on the wooden floor sent an ache to her temples with every beat. She stopped in front of the pie, tracing its movements with her eyes and watching -- in horror -- as dozens of black, hairy spiders poked their arched legs through the crust, breaking free from starch and sugar and moving right toward her -- fast. 

The Doctor was rummaging through a drawer of old papers when he heard River scream. Hearts pounding, he rushed upstairs to find her standing on the bed, scratching desperately at her arms and tearing at her clothes, muttering incoherently about spiderbites and maggots.

“River!” he jumped up onto the bed and took hold of her hands, holding her still. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?” 

“The spiders!” She cried, seeming baffled that she even had to explain. “They’re everywhere, Doctor! They came out of the pie, i-it’s filled with maggots, too, like what Pan said; the decay is getting closer!” 

The Doctor looked over at the pie, sitting neatly on the dresser. There were no spiders or maggots in sight. It even still smelled like cinnamon. 

“River, sweetie,” he gave her a gentle shake. “It’s the water. The neurotoxin. There’s nothing there.”

“Of course there’s something there, you stupid bloody idiot!” she shrieked, slapping his hands away from her. “Spiders! And they bite! Run, or they’ll get you, too!” 

He took hold of her shoulders again. A creeping sense of dread was beginning to sneak its way into his chest; she was his partner in this, whatever the hell this was. He couldn’t do it without her. He needed her sane for the sake of his own sanity just as much as he needed her safe for her own wellbeing. 

“Look at me,” he told her firmly, calmly, gently. “There is nothing there, River, it’s the water. I promise you, cross my hearts, it’s only the water making you see things that aren’t there. Trust me.” 

“But--!”

“Do you trust me, River?” 

“Yes!” 

“Then close your eyes. Close your eyes and breathe, and when you open them, the spiders will be gone.” 

River hesitated for a moment, but after managing a tense and meager nod, she shut her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again to meet the Doctor’s own wary stare, she found that he was right; the pie remained intact on the dresser, and the only things on her arms were bleeding welts where she’d scratched herself raw. 

“I don’t…” 

“The neurotoxin,” said the Doctor gravely. “You can’t let yourself get worked up, River.” 

“I wasn’t!” she defended. “It just seemed so...real.” 

The Doctor climbed down off the bed and offered River his hand. She took it, climbing down off the bed and smoothing out her jumper.

“You’re really that afraid of spiders?” 

River glared. “You’d be afraid of them too, if they were ample and bitey.” 

“Bitey?” 

“Can we focus, please?” embarrassed, River wiped her eyes on her sleeve and stalked toward the window. It was closed, and there weren’t any signs of their Calvin-and-Hobbes escapade. “Did you find anything worthwhile downstairs?” 

“There was a drawer with some papers in it downstairs. I’d like to take another look at them.” 

_Stupid girl. Stupid, disobedient girl._

“What?” River turned to look at the Doctor, startled, but looking at him, it was clear he hadn’t said anything. The damned toxins….

“I said there was a drawer--” 

“Yes, yes, of course. Lead the way,” River gestured to the staircase, following closely behind the Doctor. She spared a fleeting glance over her shoulder at the apple pie tucked neatly away. It was such a simple and silly thing, but her vision had felt as real as life ever could. She knew the Doctor was worried; she didn’t have to look inside his head to sense his concern. It was plain as day on his face. And honestly, she didn’t blame him. If the roles had been reversed, she would’ve been terrified of losing him to the madness that killed Pan, Nina, and countless others. 

He led her to a desk in the parlour, tearing out the drawer and turning its contents upside down onto the floor. It might not have been the most inconspicuous way to go about things, but River figured they’d thrown subtlety out the window when they -- and by they, she meant she -- killed the town’s leader.

She didn’t have long to dwell on whether or not they were going about things the proper way or not, because something caught her eye at the exact same time it caught the Doctor’s; a piece of paper, poking out from the dog-eared and yellow pages of an old, well-loved religious text, bore the symbol of the Circumfix, along with a few other symbols that taunted them with their familiarity. 

“Is that…” River hesitated, worried she might be wrong, but she knew she wasn’t. She just wished she was.

“Gallifreyan,” the Doctor muttered. “Yes.” 

He knelt down and plucked the paper out from the book, studying it with an unreadable expression. River wished he’d burst into tears or tear it up in a fit of rage, just so she knew what he was feeling, but his face was a perfect mask of calm. Beneath it could’ve been a raging ocean or a volcano on the verge of eruption, and no one would ever be none the wiser. 

“Doctor,” she knelt beside him, cautious. “What does it mean?” 

“It’s an excerpt from a history book about the native species. I knew I recognised that Circumfix; it’s the Gallifreyan word for the Eorno, an ancient race of which I now believe the Lady in White was once part,” he explained, tracing his fingers along the inky parchment. It was a scan of an original document, and the Circumfix had been circled. Its authors were long dead; it felt like he was holding something that belonged to a ghost. He wondered briefly how River stomached archaeology. “No one had ever seen an Eorno, because they were a very isolationist people, and they were said to have died out with their sun centuries before intelligent life sprouted up anywhere else.” 

“I know what it says,” River told him gently. She’d studied Gallifreyan as a little girl under Kovarian’s hand, and then later, at university. She was rubbish at it, but she was, at the very least, literate. “But what does it mean?” 

The Doctor stood up swiftly, the paper crumpling in his fist as he paced away, turning his back. When River stared after him, she had the strangest feeling that she was looking at a brick wall. 

“It means that, once again, the Time Lords had meddled in the lives of an innocent people who were ultimately worse off for it,” he fumed. “They came across a dying creature -- the last of the great Eorno race -- and instead of putting the damn thing out of her misery, they turned her into a science experiment. They brought the first citizens of Watertown to her to see what would happen if you paired one creature out of time with others, and the Lady, because she’d been so, so lonely for so, so very long, she saw those settlers, and...and when she saw that they were so lonely, too, she wanted to provide for them. To care for them. So she built them a world that could never die, so they’d never know what it felt like to outlive the ones you love.” 

The Doctor was no stranger to that feeling.

“But they mistook her kindness for divinity,” River deduced. “And over time, they drew up their own book of lore, which eventually became scripture, and her intentions were lost to time.” 

“No good deed goes unpunished,” said the Doctor. “The Time Lords knew that to the Eornos, death is not a sad thing, but a beautiful new beginning; the old beliefs were that upon death, a soul returned to stardust, and was reborn again somewhere else amid the cosmos,” he gestured broadly with his hands, turning back to face River. 

“They knew this, but they stole death from the Lady in White, and these rituals steal it over and over again every day,” he continued his monologue. He loved a good show. “Pan said she’d stopped eating, and I think we were right to understand why. She’s tired. But these people won’t understand that. This is Time Lord science for you! It bubbles and bubbles and bubbles, a pot unwatched, and then it boils over the moment someone who gives a damn takes a look!”

“Why would they do that?” River knew the Time Lords could be cruel bureaucrats, but she’d hardly typecasted them as mad scientists. She saw a flicker of that in the Doctor’s eyes when he’d mentioned putting the Lady in White out of her misery, and it cemented in her stomach a pit of unease. “They could’ve brought her back to her own time, they could’ve--” 

“Don’t be stupid,” he hissed. “Anything having to do with the past of the Eornos constitutes a complex space-time event, and it can’t be tampered with, River, you ought to know that.” 

“Care to tell me what else I ought to know?” River retorted. “Don’t infantilise me. I understand that you’re upset, Doctor, but I didn’t do this. I didn’t do any of this. You come from a people who are cruel and manipulative and callous, but that doesn’t mean you get a free pass to be those things.” 

“Okay, you’re right,” the Doctor put his hands up in surrender. River was right, of course, but even if she wasn’t, he knew she couldn’t afford to get riled up. The toxin was in her blood, and it was waiting for a healthy dose of adrenaline. “This explains why we’re here. The last of Time Lord blood. The Eorno people also believed that a wrong could only be corrected properly by the people who committed it in the first place.” 

“You know a lot about these people, considering you barely recognised the symbol.” 

“Oi!” chastised the Doctor. “Like I said before, no one’s ever seen them before. I’m sorry I didn’t make the connection sooner.” 

“So we’re here to clean up after antiquity’s Time Lords?” 

“Welcome to my world.” 

“I don’t like it here, in your world.” 

“Yeah,” the Doctor almost laughed. “I can’t say I blame you.” 

“We better go, then,” River nodded in the general direction of the church. “Can’t keep the masses waiting forever.” 

_You don’t really think I’d ever love anything as small as you, do you?_

River looked up; the Doctor’s lips hadn’t moved. 

“Are you alright?” he asked her, concern clear in the way his entire frame seemed to soften at the sound of her sigh.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she laughed it off, giving a dismissive wave. “Just a bit of a headache.”

That last part wasn’t a lie; her head did throb with every beat of her hearts. 

The Doctor seemed unconvinced, but he knew better than to push. “Let's get going, then.” 

And they set off toward the church.


	10. Tick, Tock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all, thanks for all the commends and kudos; I'm so glad you're enjoying this story! Only a few chapters left! When River listens to the music on the iPod in this chapter, the songs are "Bad Girls" by MIA and "Zombie" by the Cranberries, if you wanted to give them a listen. Hope you're all staying healthy and safe out there!

“Where’s Pan?” an elderly woman -- no younger than Gladys had been -- turned to Dor, a pleasant, toothless smile on her face. “He’s such a lovely fellow."

Dor forced a tight grin. “Oh, I’m sure he’ll be here soon. It’s not easy, running this town! Lots to do, and no time at all to do it!” 

River and the Doctor strolled into the church, and at her sides, Dor’s hands balled up into fists. 

These two, she thought. Troublemakers. Different from all the rest. 

“Hello, all!” announced the Doctor, chipper. The murmuring, idly chatting crowd quieted at once. “I’m afraid that our friend Pan is a bit preoccupied at the moment, but he’s given us the go ahead to postpone today’s service, and--”

Uproar among the citizens of Watertown swelled. 

“What about the Lady in White!?” cried a middle-aged brunette. All the Watertown natives seemed middle aged; had they been that old when the others had arrived on the bus? Or had they aged? River shook the conundrum out of her head. Focus, she thought.

“She’ll be fine,” River said. 

“But she’s never gone a day without this ritual,” Dor countered. “Nothing is more important to Pan than this; tending to the Lady has been his family’s sacred duty for generations.” 

“And,” added a man from the back row. “The Lady needs this to sustain.” 

“Do you question your God?” River bellowed, stunning the budding mob into silence. The Doctor glanced at her, impressed. She paced to the front of the room, standing where Pan typically stood. “Times are changing, you lot, but change is a good thing. Tell me this: Does your God honour the truth?” 

“Yes,” came a few scattered replies. 

“Does your God honour justice?”

“Yes." Reluctant murmurs. 

“Does your God value fellowship?” 

“Yes!” Agreement.

“Does your God want you to be afraid?” 

“No!” Intensity.

“Good,” River began to pace. “Because those things are right and proper. Truth, and justice, and community, and courage. And because those things are right and proper, I’m going to tell you something.” 

“River,” warned the Doctor. 

“I’ve got this,” she dismissed him. 

_Don’t mess this up. You always mess things up._

River, ignoring the watchful eyes of Dor and the Doctor and the nagging little voice whispering in the back of her head, squared her shoulders and continued on. 

“God is not any one being, or any one creature that you summon with rituals. God is an idea. God is a way of existing that honours truth, and justice, and fellowship, and courage,” she lectured, calling upon her best professor voice. “The Lady in White has been your teacher. But a clever old polymath once said, ‘Poor is the pupil who does not surpass their master.’ It’s time for you all to be your own gods, to forge your own paradise, to choose your own paths.”

A surge of emotion expanded within the Doctor’s chest; love, and admiration, and a twinge of physical attraction, which he quickly smothered. There was a time and a place, he told himself. This was neither.

“But what about the people that the Lady took away? My mummy and sister?” asked a young girl, blonde curls bouncing and big eyes full of wonder. River paused, her resolve faltering, her confidence shaken.

She could captivate a crowd, yes, she had the charisma for that. But she lacked whatever kind and gentle inclination it took to comfort anyone, for that matter, but especially a child; she saw herself reflected, there, in the small girl’s blue irises, and it was such a raw and terrible feeling that she found herself speechless for what might’ve been the first time in her life.

The Doctor took over and approached the girl, his hand pausing on River’s back for a fraction of a second. He knelt down where she sat, and the room around them was still. Watching. Waiting. The crowd had grown accustomed to a show, and even without Pan and the Lady, it seemed they were going to get one nonetheless. The Doctor's hearts filled at the sight of the child, suddenly alone and unsure why. Her sister had been the preteen with the iPod, and his mother had been Nina, dead beneath the gravel. He saw the resemblance plain as day, and something in chest expanded, sadness leaning hard against his ribcage.

But her face was not simply her own; in it, he saw the ghosts of four small girls he’d once tucked in to bed, once read stories to, once dreamt up futures for...yes, her face was not her own, but then again, it was. Nothing could bring back those who he’d lost — and the list was really quite long. They were only ghosts. As permanent as memories, as fleeting as dreams. He’d often toyed with the idea of faith, but the world beyond was one topic he was quite content to leave open-ended; belief was a comfort that the Doctor felt he didn’t deserve.

“Lots of people go away for a lot of different reasons, and only the people who have gone ever really know what that’s like,” he told her, tilting her chin up and speaking from the hearts. “But for as long as you live, no one you’ve loved is ever gone, because you carry them with you, in your head and in your heart. Is that right?” 

She nodded sadly. “Yes, mister.” 

“Let their memories be your god; honour them by honouring all the things your mum taught you were proper and good. Tell the truth when you can, and when you can’t, be a humble liar,” he looked over at River, and the faint smile at his lips managed to say everything and nothing all at once. “Be merciful when you can, but always be just.” 

The Doctor stood, and when the little girl raised her podgy hands up toward him, he scooped her into her arms, holding her on his hip.

“Sometimes, you might look back at things that you’ve said or done and realised that they weren’t kind,” he told the child and, by extension, the captivated crowd. “But that’s the story of everybody, mate. Just make sure you’re never cruel because you’re scared, or cross, or sad, because when you’re feeling those things, that’s when it’s most important to be kind. Okay?” 

A smile flashed across her lips, revealing two missing front teeth. “Yes, sir.” 

“Good,” the Doctor set her down, and she scurried back to her seat on the floor.

River regained her composure at the exact moment she watched the Doctor’s start to slip.

“Well, people, the show’s over,” she clapped, hurrying them on. “Go home with your hosts and read a book or something. And, just a word of warning: Don’t drink the water anymore. Rumour has it, it isn’t good for you. Opt for milk instead. Strong bones, and all that. Class dismissed.” 

River gave a little wave, and the congregants began to disperse. Some looked reverent, others yet unsure. It felt a little like her archaeology lectures. 

No matter, River thought. Once they’d freed the Lady in White, she imagined all the folks who had been pulled from their lives would be returned to the exact moment they'd departed from; River would wake up on Luna's carpet in Stormcage, and the Doctor would suddenly find himself standing in a crowd of concert goers, listening absently to _Fat Bottomed Girls_. 

If they were lucky -- very, very lucky -- the dead would come back to life, and time would reset itself, like it’d been shocked by temporal jumper cables.

Yes, she thought. Today they could save everyone. At least, they could try.

Well, almost everyone. She just had to find out what to do with the long-term residents of Watertown.

The little girl, holding hands with a seemingly kind-hearted old couple, waved goodbye to River as her hosts ushered her out of the church. With a straining smile, River waved back.

_Pray she doesn’t grow up to be like you, Kovarian’s voice whispered in her ear._

“Shut up,” River whispered back.

“Hey,” the Doctor touched her back, and she had to keep herself from startling. “You were brilliant.” 

“Well, when you’re raised in a cult, you know what to say to comfort cult members," River managed a cheeky smile. "You were good, too. With the girl, I mean. You never sugarcoat things with kids, but you also never frighten them with the truth.”

“The truth is never as scary as it seems,” the Doctor shrugged. “It’s all a matter of perspective.” 

River flashed him a proud smile that quickly faded at the sight of Dor shuffling over toward them. 

“Here comes trouble.” 

“What’s the meaning of all this?” Dor demanded. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing,” River told her cooly. “We’re just doing our part, that’s all.” 

“I’m going to go find Pan, and when he hears about what you’ve done -- undermining the belief of those good people, turning them on the wrong path -- he’ll have your heads.” 

And with that, she turned on her heels and followed the rest of the crowd out into the city, where the sun was strangely starting to set again.

“Well,” the Doctor cleared his throat. “I don’t think she’s going to find Pan.” 

“But her searching for him will buy us the time we need,” River rushed over toward the box she knew to contain the amulet.

_You’re in over your head, stupid girl,_ Kovarian’s voice whispered to her. _With a head injury, there’s no way you can remember the ritual properly._

“Shut up, I can do it!” River thumped herself on the head, groaning at the way it sent a shockwave of pain through her skull.

“River? What’s the matter?” 

“Nothing, nothing,” she gave a dismissive wave.

_Liar._

“I’m not lying!” 

“I didn’t say you were,” the Doctor took her hands in his. “Are you hearing things?” 

“No.” 

_Are you sure?_

“Yes.” 

“No, you’re not hearing things, or yes you are?” confused, the Doctor tilted River’s chin up. “It’s okay if you aren’t okay, River.” 

“I don’t have the time to be not okay,” River tore herself away from him, focusing instead on the box. How did Pan open it again? 

_Tick tock, goes the clock, River can’t remember. Tick tock, the walls will knock; the Lady will dismember._

“Here,” the Doctor opened the box, hanging River the amulet. “I’ll light the candles.” 

“Right, the candles,” River put the amulet over her neck. “What’d he do next? Turn this bit?” she twisted the dial on the front, sending a few flakes of rest crumbling to the floor. As they landed, it sounded like bombs had gone off -- crushing, loud, devastating. River covered her ringing ears and stumbled backward, nearly losing her footing. The Doctor, busy with the candles, hadn’t heard a thing. Thus, she deduced, it hadn’t been real, either.

And then she had an idea. 

From her pocket, she pulled out the iPod. She flipped its switch, and beneath a cracked screen, a pale yellow light flickered on. 

“If I can hear it over the music, it isn’t real,” she theorised. The Doctor turned to look at her.

“What?” 

“Auditory hallucinations,” she confessed. “They come from in my head, right? So if I play music, and I can still hear them over the noise, I can know that they aren't real, and I can keep working.”

“That’s brilliant, River,” praised the Doctor. “Are you sure you’re alright? I can--”

“I’m going to be fine,” she was comforting herself just as much as she was reassuring the Doctor. Without another word, she tucked the headphones into her ears and hit play. She just hoped the small girl had liked rock ‘n roll. 

_Live fast, die young; bad girls do it well._

Well, at least it was fitting. 

Sucking in a deep breath, River got to work. She caught the piece of parchment as it tumbled out of the amulet, and she handed it to the Doctor. Offering up a comforting smile, he knelt by the first candle and held the parchment over its flame; it didn’t burn like he thought it would. It changed colour, from a pale yellow to a striking black, illuminating white lettering. Ancient High Gallifreyan. 

It was thermochromism, River thought. Fluoran dye with octadecylphosphonic acid. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t divine. It was science. The Time Lords might’ve been cruel and manipulative, but they certainly were quick. 

She traced the Doctor’s stare to the grand doors near the sanctuary’s head. They bucked and bent just like they had before; they were doing it! The Lady was coming. It was a loud sound, judging by the way the Doctor winced and readied his sonic, but fortunately, she couldn’t hear it over the sound of the music blaring in her ears. Her plan was working perfectly.

_Had a handle on it, my life. I broke it. When I get to where I'm going, gonna have you saying it: Live fast, die young; bad girls do it well._

The Lady in White tore through the door, hovering above the wooden floor. She brought with her a wind that kicked up dust and sand and grit, and a light bright enough to blind. It was easy to see how a frightened and lonely people could look to this frightened and lonely creature and call her God; she had a power to her that captivated, and a prowess that couldn’t be missed. She was different up close, without an audience. River stepped back to stand beside the Doctor, watching as the Lady drew nearer.

“You’ve been calling out to me,” River told her, barely able to hear herself. That was good, she thought. She was calm. She wasn’t afraid. “In my dreams, I mean. And to him,” she nodded toward the Doctor. “The legends, the stories, the history, we’ve put them together, and we think we understand what you want. What you need. You just have to show us how to help you.”

The Lady reached out to them. The Doctor took hold of River’s hand.

_Are you afraid to die? Oh, you are, aren’t you?_ Kovarian’s voice laughed over the sound of the music in River’s mind. Shoulders squared, River held her ground. She wasn’t frightened, because she knew she wasn’t going to die here. She didn’t know how she knew it; she blamed it on the faded link between her own mind and the Lady’s; an old God, though not divine, stood on the precipice of yesterday and tomorrow. She knew unknowable things. She felt unfeelable things. She saw the unseeable and understood the incomprehensible. She let herself been drawn in by the sweet swell of music in her ears. The song had changed.

_Another head hangs lowly. Child is slowly taken. And the violence, caused such silence  
Who are we mistaken? But you see, it's not me; it's not my family in your head, in your head, they are fighting. With their tanks, and their bombs, and their bombs, and their guns, in your head, in your head they are crying..._

The Lady reached out her leathery hand, bony fingers and jagged yellow nails scraping lightly against River’s forehead. She shut her eyes and held her breath. Her skin tingled beneath the Lady’s touch, and then she felt the wind kick up around her, the ground falling out from beneath her feet. She wanted to shout, but she hadn’t the time; in the second or so it took her to open her mouth, she was being pulled through some tight and cold tear in reality, and at the last possible moment, she felt the Doctor’s hand slip out of hers. 

And she was alone.

And she was afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the midst of pandemic hell, I got laid off from another professional writing gig when the magazine I freelance for went under, so I've definitely been burying my anxieties in writing fanfic. If anyone has any one-shot prompt requests or anything like that, I've got nothing but time now while I wait for the government to lift quarantine orders, so I'd be happy to write some other short stories! In the meantime, thank you, as always, for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos!


	11. The Little Girl From Leadworth (And All Other Ghosts)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is weird and this author regrets nothing 
> 
> hope you're all doing well! as always, comments, kudos, and suggestions are much appreciated :) the songs river hears in this chapter are called "pale blue eyes" by the velvet underground (one of my personal favourite songs ever and also very much a river/doctor ballad) and "sound of silence" by simon and garfunkel!

_Sometimes I feel so happy. Sometimes I feel so sad. Sometimes I feel so happy, but mostly you just make me mad. Baby, you just make me mad. Linger on your pale blue eyes. Linger on your pale blue eyes._

River stirred. Music still played in her ears. It took her awhile to remember why. 

Plucking out an earbud, she sat up. The ground was cold and wet. The room was dark. A single candle lit up a corner of it tucked away against the far wall, but nothing of use seemed to be illuminated by its yellow light. Just concrete walls and a muddy floor. 

“If this is Hell,” River muttered groggily to herself. “The Devil really needs to hire a new interior designer.” 

She rubbed her eyes and tried her best to remember. Everything felt foggy and on a delay; her head hurt, and when she tried to think, it hurt worse. How long had she been out? 

The Doctor. The church. They’d been holding hands. He let go. Or maybe she did. Or maybe they both did. It was hard to say. But no matter what, they weren’t together, and so it didn’t really seem to matter much whose fault it was. What mattered, she thought, was that he wasn’t there. Where was he? Where was _she_?

Something moved in the corner, a faint shadow cast in the candle’s pale glow. River heard it’s faint scuffle over the sound of her music, even as she affixed both earbuds firmly in her ears, and so she knew it wasn’t real. But knowing and believing were starting to diverge, turning into two different things entirely. She believed it was there, and she knew that it wasn’t. She knew it couldn’t hurt her, but she believed that it would.

“Hello?” she called out, standing up and inching slowly toward the sound, hand balled into a fist. She felt a bit silly; what would she do, punch it? Punch a nightmare that she knew wasn’t really there? Yes, she thought. That’s exactly what she’d do.

It moved again, hidden only by a darkness so thick it could’ve hid River’s own hand right in front of her face. She stood still, waiting. Breathing. Focusing. Thinking. She was counting down slowly from ten — a grounding technique Luna had taught her — when she suddenly caught sight of what had been moving through the dark: Huddled in the corner at the edge of the candlelight was a small child, clothes torn, flesh pale, lips blue. Her curled hair was chopped short, tangled into a bird’s nest of knots and matted coils. She was a familiar child who had never quite existed, a little girl from Leadworth, whose life had never quite been real. She lived in the corner of River's mind, a subtle what-if that never was. She'd never been anything more than that before.

But she was real, now. River stared at a younger version of herself, like a reflection in a horror house mirror. They had the same sense of wilderness in their same, sad eyes, and for reasons she’d never be able to explain, River felt an unparalleled, indescribable terror take her by the throat and squeeze. 

As the little girl from Leadworth turned, River saw that she was as half-formed as her own loose concept of a parallel self; one side of her round face was young, and sad, and small, and frightened. But the other side, as her profile turned, was made up of blank, burnt skin — stiff, and grey, and terrible, and dead.

_The burnt child loves the fire._

River backed away until she hit a wall, and she slid down it until she was sitting, knees hugged to her chest. She squeezed her damp eyes shut and sucked the kind of sharp breath that usually preceded a scream. 

_Stay calm_ , a voice whispered to her before she had the chance to shout. It was Luna! River opened her eyes, and sure enough, Dr. Akinjide-Okereke sat cross-legged in front of her. 

She wasn’t real. River knew it. She could hear her over the sound of the Velvet Underground crooning in her ears, but that suddenly didn’t matter much. River was just delighted to see a familiar face that wasn’t her own. 

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!” River told her, breathless. Behind Luna, the little girl from Leadworth had vanished, and she took River's sudden, striking fear with her. 

“I know,” Luna smiled kindly. “That’s why your brain spit me out. But you know that. You already know everything I can say to you, because you know I’m not real; I’m in your head.” 

“If you’re in there, maybe you can tell me why it hurts so much,” River massaged her temples with a low groan.

“Because you’ve smacked it twice, and because you haven’t been listening to the Doctor’s suggestions about practicing safe telepathy.” 

River dismissed her suggestion with a wave. “I’ve really gone mad, eh? Talking to myself.” 

“You’re not talking to yourself,” Luna seemed offended. “You’re talking to me.” 

River laughed bitterly. “You’re not really here. I know it.” 

“That doesn’t matter,” Luna stood up, and River followed suit. “Knowing is hardly the same thing believing, River Song. You believe that you’re psychotic, even though you know that you aren’t. You believe that the Doctor doesn’t love you, even though you know that he does. Knowing is objective and factual, but believing? That’s pure emotion, honey.” 

River looked over at Luna, ready to accuse her of getting a bit too far off-topic, a bit too personal, only to find that she was no longer Luna Akinjide-Okereke; in her place stood Amelia Pond. 

River exhaled sharply, whispering out a startled, “Mum?” 

“The one and only,” said Amy, tucking a strand of fire-red hair back behind her ear. “C’mon, then. You can’t just stand there. You’ve got a job to finish. Ponds don’t leave things half-done.” 

River could’ve wept. She would’ve, if she had the time. 

“Right. Erm...Mum, I’ve got to ask you some things,” she said, approaching the candle. It was the only thing in the room that might give her an answer about where she is.

“You can ask me anything,” Amy told her. “But you know it isn’t really me answering. It’s your own head, telling you what you want to hear. Or what you're afraid of hearing.” 

“I know,” River admitted. “Is it silly that I want to hear your voice say it nonetheless?” 

“Yes, it’s silly,” Amy giggled. “But it’s also normal. That’s what Luna would say, eh?” 

“Do you care for me?” River asked her, frightened of the response her mind might produce. 

But Amy smiled tenderly, and said, “Of course. Very, very much.” 

“You aren’t frightened of me?” River inspected the lone candle. It was a long stick of white wax, held in a brass sconce fastened to the wall. 

“What’s there to be frightened of?” she heard Amy say. “You’re my daughter. You’re brave, and you’re strong, and you always do what you have to do.”

A fond warmth in her chest, River smiled as she reached for the candle. She needed to explore, and she needed light to do it. But as she reached out to touch it, a droplet of hot wax dribbled down onto her hand. Startled by the sudden sting, River jerked, knocking the candle out of its holder. It fell down to the wet ground and promptly extinguished. The room was cast in a darkness that seemed somehow fluid; it filled River’s lungs and when she tried to breathe in, she found that panic was weighing heavy in her lungs.

“Dammit!” she cried.

_Stupid girl_ , came Kovarian voice, sharp and formless. River startled, pressing herself up against the wall once again. Wide eyes welled up with tears. Through the darkness, she swore she could see shadows moving toward her. 

_Remember the story of the Furies?_ she rasped. _It was your very favourite. Vengeful spirits hounded guilty souls to death. Maybe that’s what killed Nina in the rubbish tip, hm? Are they coming for you?_

“No!” River cried, sliding down the wall to sit. Her hearts pounded, her head throbbed, her stomach ached. “You’re not real. You’re not real,” she repeated, but her words got lost in the static between her mind and her mouth.

In her ears, the music sang.

_Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again, because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping, and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains...within the sound of silence._

As panic wrapped itself around her chest and squeezed until she couldn’t catch her breath, she felt tears well up in her eyes, hot and heavy as they dribbled down her flushed-red cheeks. She didn’t remember the last time she’d cried like this -- hard, desperate, and lonely sobs that shook her shoulders. The weight of the world was sitting pretty on her chest. She tried to breathe, and she couldn’t.

“It’s okay,” Amy told her, gentle and soothing -- a mother’s voice. “It’s okay to be scared. I wish I could tell you you’ll be safe. I wish I could tell you you’ll be alright. But what you will be, River, is very brave. You’ve got to be.” 

“Mum, I can’t do this,” River cried. All she could think about was that she’d been wrong before; maybe this is where she dies, cold and alone and frightened. 

“You have to,” Amy said, and behind her -- even though her back was pressed firmly against the cold stone wall -- Rory’s voice echoed, “C’mon, River, get up. You’re brave enough.” 

_Clever enough,_ whispered the Doctor.

_You aren’t,_ countered Kovarian. _You’re a coward. A machine that’s shorted out. A failed experiment._

“You’re a fighter,” said Amy.

_A killer._

“A hero.” 

_A tragedy._

“Who are you going to listen to?” Rory demanded. “Us, or her?” 

She heard Kovarian’s cackle of a laugh, piercing and sharp against the quiet. 

River took a few deep breaths and looked up, eyes bearing into the darkness. Terror morphed slowly into determination. 

“Neither,” she said, pulling herself up onto unsteady feet, holding onto the wall for support. “I’m going to listen to myself. I can make my own assessments, now. No one tells me what I am but me.” 

_And what are you, stupid girl?_

“I don’t know,” River laughed tearfully. “I-I don’t know, but one day, I will. I know that, because not long ago, I didn’t even know what I’m not. But now, I know perfectly well that I’m not just some little plaything of the universe. I’m not just the girl who was born to kill the Doctor. I’m not just his wife. I’m not _just_ anything! I’m River Song.” 

She yanked the headphones out of her ears and tossed the iPod to the ground. The voices were gone; the only sound she could hear was the faint drumbeat of music still blaring from the battered little device. 

Breathing hard, she leaned up against the wall and scrubbed tiredly at her eyes. When she opened them again, the darkness was only darkness. 

Was it over? Had she beaten the toxin? She saw no trace of any lingering nightmares. Gone was the little girl from Leadworth and all other ghosts. It was hard to know for sure if it was finished, or just the eye of a bigger storm yet to come, but she felt better. Not great, mind you, but better. She collected the iPod, switching it off and tucking it into the front pocket of her dungarees, just in case. 

“Alright, then. Okay. It’s okay. I'm okay,” she muttered breathlessly, drying her eyes on the sleeves of her jumper and counting herself down from ten. “At least I know what rock bottom looks like. It could’ve been worse, right? Oh, and there I go again, talking to myself.” 

She felt her way along the wall, her head clear at last. She figured that there had to be a door somewhere. Slowly, she began to use her newfound sharpness of mind to piece together a few events: She’d been in the church. She’d been with the Doctor. They’d summoned the Lady. The Lady had taken her. Taken her where, and where, then, was the Doctor? 

One question at a time, she thought. Baby steps. 

Through the darkness, she felt the surface of the wall change. She ghosted her fingers over a few planks of wood, held together with metal hinges and nails.

“This is promising. And...aha!” She came to a doorknob, cold and brass, and when she gave it a turn, the door clicked open. That was probably the first time in recent memory that a door hadn’t been locked. She hoped it was an omen, that it meant the hard part was over. 

She crossed the threshold into a narrow hallway, illuminated by candles pinned up in sconces along the wall. Having learned her lesson the hard way -- though she'd later find that the wax hadn't really burnt her hand, that it hadn't ever even dripped at all -- she left them where they were, and let them lead her toward whatever lay ahead. 

***

The Doctor wasn’t panicking. No, not yet.

He was only freaking out. Freaking out and panicking were different -- and often, the difference was whether or not he’d burn a world to stop the source of his anxiety from spreading. Right now, he had no intentions of burning Watertown, not until he found River. If he found her and she was hurt, then he’d panic. And people would pay. Nothing was worth more than she was. Not to him. Not ever.

He wasn’t a good man. Often, he feared River thought he believed he was; but in truth, he only _tried_ to be a good man, and that, he figured, was different. Like playing a part. Like pretending. Method acting, maybe, on a good day.

He didn’t like to hurt people -- for every tear he caused or scratch he inflicted, part of his soul chipped away -- but he’d killed more than anyone else he’d ever heard of, and he reckoned he didn’t have much soul left to file down. In the language of the Gamma Forest, the name “Doctor” meant “mighty warrior.” There was a reason for that, and it was him. 

River was right when she’d said history didn’t care whether or not a murder was well-intentioned or necessary. It only ever dug up bones. He wondered how many would be buried beneath the rubble of today’s panic — if he let it come to that. 

It wouldn’t, he told himself. It wouldn’t, because he was going to find River, make sure that she was alright, and together, they’d save the world. Again. Just an average weekday, really. 

“Okay,” he paced the church. It was empty, now, and without River at his side, he was suddenly reminded of why he never travelled alone. “Let’s go over the facts.” 

Fact one: Watertown was a failed Time Lord science experiment. 

Fact two: The Lady in White is an ancient native species. The rest of her kind had long since died out, but the people of Watertown forced her to live on, because her death would mean the death of the city itself. With her gone, the things she’d been sustaining would no longer sustain: Food, plants, residents…maybe that’s why everyone in the city seemed to be nearing the same older-than-middle-age. 

He groaned. 

_Everybody knows that everybody dies._

Clever River. She was right. He’d heard her say that before, a long time ago, or maybe she hadn’t said it yet. It was hard to keep track of it all. He didn’t know why, but thinking too hard about that line put a pit in his stomach. 

But she was right. Watertown was a ghost. It had been cheating death for a very, very long while, but it had been doing it at the expense of a poor old creature. Every dog has its day, and every day eventually ends. 

“Alright,” he muttered. “No more thinking. Time to act.” 

He turned around to find himself face-to-face with Dor. She was holding a knife. A big knife. A big, sharp knife.

The Doctor put his arms up, his eyes narrowing.

“Dor, I have to tell you, I don’t respond well to threats.” 

“This isn’t a threat,” she smiled pleasantly, tapping the knife menacingly against his cheek. “It’s a promise, dear. A promise that if you come with me and do all that I say, I won’t carve up your pretty girl like a holiday ham.” 

The Doctor faltered. “Where is she? Where does the Lady take people?” 

Dor only grinned. 

“I’m warning you, Dor,” he took a step toward her, pausing only when he reached the tip of her blade. “You do not want to be my enemy. I’ve done terrible things, and I’ll do them all over again if it means protecting the people I love.” 

“Spare me the theatrics,” Dor groaned. “You have no power here, dear. We both know that. Pan has the power.” 

“Pan is dead.” 

Dor’s smile strained. “When that’s very bad news for you, dear.” 

“Is it?” 

“Yes, it is,” she hissed. “Because Pan had no descendants, and so he had to appoint another successor to take his place as Keeper, should the Lady deem his time to come. It typically would be his wife, but he never married, and so he appointed his mistress.” 

The Doctor was beginning to put things together, and he hated it. He groaned, thumping himself in the head.

“I’m so slow! I should’ve seen this coming! You didn’t kill Har because he told us about the water,” he deduced. “You killed him because you knew that us knowing about the water meant we’d eventually find out how Pan was controlling the town, and once we did--” 

“It was always our plan, Pan and I, to run off together,” Dor interrupted. “You only made us speed it up. But with sweet old Pan gone, I suppose this is my show, now. I am the Keeper of the Lady in White, and you and I are going to pay her a visit.”


	12. Heal Thyself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for mild arachnophobia at the beginning of this chapter! And mild gore toward the end.

When River was a small girl, she’d snuck down into a damp Florida basement; she’d heard rumours that Greystark Hall Orphanage kept a rocking horse down there. 

It didn’t make much sense, in retrospect, but to frightened little girls who desperately want to believe in magic, happy things don’t have to make much sense. It was that pesky difference between knowing and believing. She'd known there was no such thing as Santa Claus, but that hadn't stopped her from believing he'd come every year, and it certainly hadn't stopped her from crying where he never did.

The staircase leading down into the cellar had been wet, and the wall was cold as she held onto its textured surface to keep from slipping. It was storming outside, she recalled, and through the rectangular egress window above the boiler, she could see the occasional, intrepid flash of lightning. She remembered how it frightened her. The storm. The thunder. The rain. Kovarian told her stories about naughty little girls who got swept away by floodwaters sent down by the Demon, pulled out to sea, and eaten up by sharks. But she wasn’t afraid of the sharks eating her up, no, she was afraid of what Kovarian would do if she learned that she’d snuck out. 

But it would be worth it, if she could have even the shortest moment to play. Kovarian didn’t let her play. Play rotted the mind, she always said. Degraded the senses. 

She’d spotted what she swore was the rocking horse, tucked away under a faded blue tarp. The puddles of muddied water had soaked the hem of her dress, but she paid it no mind as she skipped through them to the toy. She’d read about toys — toys that weren’t nunchucks or throwing stars or gutted, ratty teddybears with missing button eyes — and she’d always wanted to see one in real life!

But as she tugged off the tarp, she learned just how bad disappointment could feel. It was just a rusty old boat engine, left to rot until warmer weather made it useful again. But that wasn’t the part that had really stuck with her. Nesting in the pistons and gears was a colony of spiders, and with their safety tugged away by podgy little hands, they scattered. Maybe there had been four, or maybe there had been ten, or maybe there had been one hundred; time tends to warp the details of old memories, but no matter how many they were, they’d crawled over her arms and legs and she’d been too terrified to even scream. 

She’d never told anyone. Not Kovarian. Not the Doctor. But River had been afraid of spiders ever since.

And wherever she was now, in some catacomb-like labyrinth beneath Watertown, was just crawling with them. And unlike the incident with the pie, these arachnids were very, very real.

“Well, at least you know you aren’t dead,” she whispered to herself, a half-failed attempt at levity as she watched a particular gruesome spider scurry across the ground ahead of her. “Unless, of course, death is a long, spider-filled corridor, in which case, I really think I hate being dead.” 

Up ahead, she heard something; a metallic shift, a rusty clang. A burst of wind filled the tunnel, and a few of the candles went out. 

“Right, then,” she muttered. “Maybe that’s a good sign.” 

She knew it probably wasn’t. But if she hadn’t already known, the faint mental prodding against the walls of her mind would’ve been enough of an indication. She did her best to keep it out, but it pressed its way through, and it burned. She didn’t quite know how to describe the way it hurt; like someone had taken a hot piece of metal and pressed it to her skull. She winced, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over. 

“Give my head a rest, will you!?” she hissed out through grit teeth. As quickly as the pain had come, it was gone, but there was a whole new breadth of knowledge in her brain that she hadn’t had before. A slew of new feelings. New thoughts. The Lady in White was here. These were corridors beneath the city. Specifically, beneath the church. This is where the Lady stayed until she was summoned by the Keeper. She hated it down here. She missed the meadows. She missed the sun. She wanted to feel it one last time.

River’s eyes were damp, but for the first time that day, her tears were not her own.

“Where are you?” she continued forward. “You brought the Doctor and I here because of what we are. What we know. You’ve been trying to communicate with me for awhile now, but I’ve been misunderstanding. But now, I think, we’re speaking the same language. Show me how to let you go.” 

In her mind, she saw a flash of an image, coming through with blurry corners and colours that didn’t seem to match anything she had a name for. An open room. An old room. High ceilings and higher technology; an invisible glass box, charged with Artron energy, kept the Lady from ever leaving. It was like a forcefield wrapped around the whole of the church, with a stronger chamber down in the tunnels to keep her from wandering about. All of that, though, was just a fancy way to call it a prison. 

River knew what that was like.

“Prison’s rubbish, isn’t it?” she walked on, eyeing a door coming into focus amid the shadows. It practically buzzed with Artron energy. “But at least the guards at my jail don’t think I’m a god. More of a devil, me. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be stuck there.” 

She felt a slight confusion through the mind link, and she let out a quiet laugh.

“I have a reputation for running away,” she explained. “Escaping, I mean. I’ve been doing that all my life, escaping. But recently, I’ve been very good at helping others escape. It’s all quite circular, isn’t it? But tell me...what will you do when you escape? You don’t really want to die, do you?” 

A flash of memories came to River; her own memories. Her mother. Her father. The Doctor. People she didn’t know yet, and others she hadn’t seen in a very long while. And then a question transplanted into her head: What would you do if you were the only one left? 

“I’d cry, I’m sure,” River told her. “I’d cry, and I’d cry, until I couldn’t cry anymore. But then I’d pick myself up, and I’d go out into the meadow and I’d feel the sun, and I’d smile at all the happy memories I have. You see, there are a few good people in this universe I’d die for, but I’m determined to live for myself.” 

Fondness. Affection. Wisdom. Sorrow. 

_Everything ends._

River frowned. “I suppose it does. But killing you...wouldn’t that be a bit like genocide? The last of your kind, and whatnot. It’s a moral dilemma, even for me.” 

_I am old, now._

“Oh, you hardly look a day over…” River stopped in her tracks; she heard footfalls coming up behind her. They were faint, but they were there, and she felt the sudden urge to break into a run. 

And so that’s exactly what she did.

_Whatever you do,_ a familiar voice whispered to her. It was real, she knew it. She’d beaten the toxin. It was the Doctor! He was alright! And he was calling out to her mind. _Don’t give Dor what she wants._

Dor? What was she doing down here? 

River only stopped running when she came to an opening, pausing in her tracks to catch her breath.

The narrow corridor peeled itself open into a grand — albeit rustic — chamber, just like the one River had seen in her mind. The ground was made of rich soil, and the walls were built of hastily-constructed red brick. They climbed toward a high stone ceiling, crumbling pebbles held back by a drooping metal grate. It reminded her a bit of a mining shaft, but at the centre stood the Lady in White. 

“There you are,” River muttered, taken aback. The Lady reached out to her, but an invisible force field zapped her hand, and she recoiled. She let out a howl, and River felt a pang of her frustration.

“Sh, hey, it’s alright,” she cooed. “I’m going to get you out of here. But we’re going to have to work together, eh?” 

Sympathy. Understanding. 

River rushed to the force field, putting her hand up against it. Sure enough, it shocked her palm, and she cursed. The Doctor’s sonic would have it down in no time. The only thing that could destroy Time Lord tech was, it seemed, more Time Lord tech. 

“Alright, then, we wait,” she muttered. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. We know all about you, now. The last of the Eorno people,” River took a good, hard look at the Lady; she’d been avoiding that until now. But with an invisible wall between them, any reservations she might’ve had were quickly dismissed. 

She could see the ancient inlay embedded in the Lady’s gown; cross-stitch flowers sewn into ivory tweed. She could see her age spots and wrinkles in her fair complexion. While the Eornos seemed to have a thicker skin than humans — or Time Lords, for that matter — flesh was flesh. She could see the soft protrusion of the Lady’s cheekbones, the shadows cast beneath the sharpness of her jaw. River sat down cross-legged at the base of the force field.

“The Doctor, he’s the last of his kind, too,” River told her. “I mean, I guess I’m technically like him, but not really. The things he knows, the culture, the lore, the history of his people, it’s all carried in him. In his head. If he lets any of it go, it’s all gone forever, because I certainly don’t have any of it, and he’s too stubborn to teach me. Or maybe I’m too stubborn to learn it,” she laughed. “My knowledge of where he comes from is purely academic, but books can only teach you so much,” she smiled sadly up at the Lady. “And if you die, all of your stories die, too. I’m sure you have so very many...no one ever knew anything about your people. That’s what the Doctor said. Timeless, ancient, and those are the words of a Time Lord — the most timeless, ancient people I can think of.” 

Rage. Anger. Hurt. The Time Lords had done this to her.

“Right,” River muttered. She’d almost forgotten that bit. “But the Doctor...he isn’t like the others. He ran away, because they frightened him, and disgusted him, and I think he was worried that if he stayed, he’d become like all the rest. It’s true; he can be ruthless. We all can be, can’t we? If we’re cross enough, or frightened enough, or sad enough. But he can also be so, so kind. So understanding. So gentle. I’ve also never known anyone who cares so much about the universe.” A pause. “About me.” 

Affection. Grief. She’d had a partner, once, but he’d died along the rest of the Eornos thousands of years ago. River felt a fullness in her throat.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry.” 

_River. Run._

It was the Doctor again, prodding into her mind. River stood up with a start. 

_I’m not going anywhere,_ River thought. _You know me better than that._

No sooner had she turned toward the entranceway did Dor appear in it, holding an intimidatingly large carving knife up to the Doctor’s throat. 

“Hello, honey,” the Doctor managed a sheepish laugh. “I’m home.” 

River made a move toward him, but Dor readied her knife, and she froze.

“Hurt him, and I’ll burn you, this town, and everything you love,” River said, her voice like ice. 

“River,” hushed the Doctor. “It’s alright.” 

“Funny. He said something very similar about you,” Dor remarked. “You can’t die here at my hand, because the Lady sustains life. But it's no problem. She also sustains pain. Suffering.”

“I don’t understand,” River eyed Dor with mingled apprehension and hatred. “You didn’t seem capable of this.”

“The fault’s your own, dear,” Dor clicked her teeth, feigning pity. “Everyone is capable of just about anything, given the proper circumstances. You corner even the sweetest old dog, it’s going to bite. You strike even the meanest mut, it’s going to cower. And you, my mut, can only be so brave for so long.”

She tossed the Doctor into the chamber. His hand immediately found River’s and they backed up against the wall. 

“Are you alright?” she asked him. He nodded.

“Fine. You?” 

She nodded. “Never been better.” 

“The voices…” 

“Gone, now. You?” 

“Time Lord physiology must’ve filtered the toxins out straight away,” he speculated. “Lucky me. Unless, of course, none of this is real and it’s all just a clever hallucination.” 

“Oh, I wish it was!” 

“Enough,” Dor silenced them. “You two may have been clever enough to avoid the water madness, but you’ll be perfect sacrifices for her. Either she’ll take you painlessly within the hour, or I’ll come back and take you both to the place where things decay, and you’ll die slowly,” she shot a seething look at the Lady. “Her choice.” 

River scoffed. “What makes you think we’d go with you?” 

“So glad you asked, dear,” Dor smiled, the very same smile Pan had worn. River knew it meant trouble. “Your options are death — for the Greater Good, of course — or pain. Suffering. You can’t die here, yes, but you can hurt. I figured it was due time for me to raise the stakes for you.”

And in a swift lunge, she drove the knife into River’s abdomen.

Well, thought River, stuck in a shocked sort of mental stasis. This is not good. Not good at all.

It was a bit like she was falling out of the window again, but she was perfectly still with the sort of cold, chilly calm that took over when shock set in. It was the rest of the world that was falling out around her. The Doctor was screaming. The Lady was howling. Dor was laughing. Or maybe it was all in her head. She wasn’t sure. She was only sure of one thing, and it was the searing ache in her gut, and the warmth pouring out through her fingers, pressed tightly against her wound. 

Satisfied with her work, Dor withdrew the blade, splattered with blood, and wiped it off on her dress. She turned on her heels and shuffled out of the chamber.

“I’ll be back,” she called, footfalls fading into the corridor. “I’d like to say it was nice knowing you, dears, but you really were troublesome!” 

And she was gone.

The Doctor leaned over River, eyes wet and wide in horror. His hands fumbled against her wound, searching for a way to stop the blood, but he knew it didn’t matter. “River! River, talk to me, sweetie, I’m so sorry. I’m--”

“Stop fussing,” River weakly smacked his hands away, wincing. “Dor said it herself; i-it’s not like I’m going to die straight away.” 

“That’s hardly the point! You’ve been stabbed!” cried the Doctor, helping her sit up. “Oh, River, love, does it hurt?” 

With grit teeth, River managed, “What the hell do you think!?” 

“Right, sorry,” the Doctor, panicked, hovered over her, unsure what to do with his hands. “What can I do? How can I help?” 

“Your sonic,” River reached for his pocket. Her hands were trembling. She’d been hurt plenty before, but this was different. This was the sort of hurt that wasn’t meant to last long, because it was the sort of hurt that usually would’ve killed her after a minute or so. But Dor had been right; death was a sick and twisted privilege in Watertown, and with sustained life, came sustained pain. And it was agony.

“It can’t heal that kind of wound, it can’t--” 

“I know, I know,” Rive took a deep breath and groaned at the way it sent a dull ache through her whole body. “Use it to disable the Lady’s force field. Let her out. Set her free.” 

The Doctor glanced between the Lady and River, his eyes filtering down to her wound. 

“If we go through with this,” he began, careful. “If we destroy the Lady...you’ll die. Her power is the only thing keeping you alive right now.” 

Tears welled up in River’s eyes — not at the thought of dying, no, but at the thought of leaving him alone. Though she didn't really want to die, either.

“I know,” she took his hand and kissed his knuckles, breath short and shallow. 

“This isn’t right!” the Doctor stood up and began to pace. “You aren’t supposed to die here, River! Fixed points! This isn’t it! This isn’t where it happens,” he was beginning to come undone. He turned to her, livid. “You’re not going to die here, because...because we aren’t going to do this. Not here. Not now.”

“Doctor…” River warned. He was getting close to telling her something she knew she couldn’t ever know.

“We aren’t,” he told her with a cold and calculated sureness, as if it was scripture. “I’m not going to let you die. I’m going to...I’m going to get my TARDIS, a-and I’m going to get you to hospital, and I’m--” 

“We haven’t the time for all that, sweetie.”

River had snagged his sonic from his coat pocket. He hadn’t noticed, but she was good like that. 

She mustered up the strength to press the button and aim it just right, and before the Doctor had the time to shout, the force field was down. First, in the chamber, and then around the rest of the city. It was a bit anticlimactic, but the biggest parts of life -- or of death, for that matter -- usually were.

“River, don’t!” he cried, dropping to his knees at her side.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she whispered weakly. “But I had a job to finish. Ponds don’t leave things half-done.” 

“There are things I haven’t gotten to say to you yet,” he told her, voice feeble.

“Then say them,” River smiled weakly, touching his cheek. “Better make it brief.”

Lips pursed, he shook his head. “No, I won’t, because this isn’t the end, River Song, you are too bloody stubborn for this to be the end, and besides...I-I know--” 

“Everything ends, Doctor,” River soothed. “Don’t make a spectacle of it. Just tell me a story. One with a beginning, a middle, and an end.” 

The Doctor tried to laugh, but a sob came out in its place. “A happy end?” 

River shook her head. "I’m afraid not.” 

“A true story, then,” remarked the Doctor, smiling through his grief. His throat was full; he could hardly speak, it hurt too much. Losing her. His best friend. “I can’t,” he whispered, voice laced with tremolo. “I can’t, River.”

River understood. Of course she understood. She'd been in his position before — faced with the death of her beloved — and she knew how it ached. She held onto his hand with both of hers and managed a faint smile.

“Just tell me you love me, then." 

“The truest, and saddest story ever told,” replied the Doctor, cupping her cheek. His thumb brushed lightly along the curve of her jaw. “I love you, River. So much. And that’s why we’re going to get you through this, okay?” 

The Lady’s wind ruffled River’s hair, and she shut her eyes. She always reckoned she’d die looking at the stars. It didn’t seem fair that she’d die looking at the first of many nightmares to have come alive, and she couldn’t bear to look at the Doctor while he was crying for her. And so she closed her eyes and pictured something different, something better, something nameless and faceless and happy. Maybe a meadow. Maybe the night sky. Maybe a life that never was of the little girl from Leadworth -- once a creature pulled from the most uncertain corner of her mind, where she kept the things she didn’t like to wonder about. 

But she knew she could’ve been that girl who could’ve gone to a school that made her wear a uniform she hated, who could’ve had homework assignments and school dances with boys whose hearts she’d break and girls who would almost certainly break hers. A life that never was, a girl who was never quite real enough, a half-formed thought, because she’d been raised by someone else’s standards, to do someone else’s dirty work, and she couldn’t even die on her own terms. 

Alright, enough of that, she thought. Enough theatrics. She’d died before -- a handful of regenerations -- but this time, it felt permanent. Regeneration was a bit like a free trial of dying, but once your time was up, you had to pay. And oh, she was paying. Dearly. 

But then something strange started to happen, something soft and subtle and odd. The Lady hadn’t gone from the chamber, like River had thought she would. Rather, she was hovering over them watching, lips parted, wind kicking up dust and dirt along the rustic ground. They’d been so caught up in each other that they’d hardly noticed her. 

The Lady reached her hand out, bony fingers prodding into River’s belly wound, but rather than pain, River felt a tingle. It started in her stomach, and then spread about beneath her skin, like a sunkissed warmth. It almost felt like regeneration, without any of the ache. But she wasn’t changing. She couldn’t change. She’d used all that power up in Berlin, if she remembered correctly. Not like she’d want to change; she rather liked this body, this face, this hair. And every change was a gamble; she’d risk turning into a man, and sometimes, she figured she’d rather die. Except not really. Not now, anyway.

_Focus_ , she told herself, but reality felt distant. _Something is happening to you, and you’re the only person in the room not paying attention to it._

The now-dull pain in her stomach was suddenly gone, and she was abruptly aware of the way the once-distance world around her felt; dirt itching against sweat-soaked skin, the too-tight pinch of her dingaree’s twisted inseam, the dampness of the Doctor’s tears on his cheeks when he kissed her, everything felt real. She felt alive. She felt good. Even her headache was gone, and when she touched her belly, she found that the jagged wound had sealed. 

She sat up, slowly, carefully, with the stunned Doctor’s hand carefully guiding her. 

“You fixed her,” the Doctor’s eyes trailed the Lady in White as she moved curiously around the chamber. “You healed her.” 

It didn’t seem to be without sacrifice; the Lady seemed weaker than before. Older. Tired. She sustained her own life, yes -- and by extension, the life of Watertown -- by taking life away from outsiders. But she could give life, too. It only followed that it came at the expense of her own lifeforce, and thus, Watertown’s.

River didn’t know it yet, but the plants in Dor’s old garden had begun to wilt. The city’s residents aged another year in the time it took for her to remember how to speak.

“Thank you,” was the first thing she said once the logistics of talking came back to her.

“It’s the one thing Dor hadn’t planned on,” the Doctor grinned, his tears drying as he pulled River into a close hug. “Compassion! Empathy! Self-sacrifice! Oh, River Song, what are you like!”

“I never thought of that,” River stammered. “In my dreams, I mean. I had one bullet and two people to choose, and I never thought I could turn the bullet on myself and save them all.” 

“Neither did she,” the Doctor nodded toward the Lady. “Until right now. An act of altruism from an ancient, timeless god. I suppose that won’t help your swelling ego, sweetie,” he teased, putting his arm around River. With a laugh, she let herself lapse into a rare moment of smallness, of pause, in which the only thing she wanted was to be near him. With him. By him. She was happier to be alive that she thought she’d be; as someone who flirted with death, who courted it, who beckoned it with ruby red nail polish and a matching grin...she didn’t really want to die. She hadn’t anticipated the coldness. The loneliness. The loss. 

She’d had quite the day, she thought, and so she took a short moment to be selfish; she stole a second in the grand scheme of eternity that would be theirs -- hers and the Doctor’s -- and theirs alone. And so she hugged him close, inhaling the familiar whiff of sandwood off his coat. She let his warmth hold her until the silence hung heavily around them, and then she pulled away, a teasing grin affixed to her cheeks. 

“Are you alright?” she asked him, straightening his bowtie. Tearfully, he nodded.

“Never been better.”

She smiled at him one last time before getting back down to business. “So what comes next?” she glanced between the Doctor and the Lady. “What do we do?” 

The Lady in White reached out both hands, one touching the Doctor’s forehead and the other settling against River’s. They shut their eyes, and in a blink, they were gone.


	13. Extremis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! :) This is the last official chapter, but stay tuned for an epilogue! There's one more story in the series, and the overarching bad guy from the past installments — a strange bloke who calls himself The Watcher — is about to become a much bigger problem.

Dor was positively livid. She thought that she’d been rather efficient down in the Keeper’s Chamber, giving that curly-haired piston a good old-fashioned belly wound to slow her down. 

The water madness hadn’t killed her off, which should’ve been Dor’s first clue that a knife wouldn’t do the trick, either. But that was the problem with god complexes; you always think your plans are infallible. She thought for sure the stupid old animal in that cage — Pan had taught her the truth — would take pity on the couple and swallow them up. She didn’t know what exactly had happened, but judging by the change in scenery, it wasn’t good.

Her rose bush was dying. The apple pie neatly set on the desk upstairs had gotten cold, its crust flaky and stale. The leaves had been dying on the trees by the bus station, creeping ever closer as the Lady’s sustenance wavered. Now, the trees surrounding Watertown were a wide array of orange and yellow hues. The townspeople had left their houses to marvel. They’d never seen autumn before. They didn’t know that autumn meant winter, and winter meant death. That things died in the cold, in the dark.

Staring at her own reflection in her mirror, Dor counted a new wrinkle on her own flesh, lining up perfectly with all the frowning she’d been doing as of late. Pity, she thought. Pan had always liked her young. That didn’t matter now, though, that he was dead. Har had liked her no matter what, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel guilty about offing him in the rubbish tip. She was part of something bigger, something far more grand. She could live forever, if she could stop those two bratty kids. Pan and Har were dead, yes, but they’d outlived their use, anyway. A husband was just a sophisticated pet to care for, she thought, and she never cared much for dogs.

She picked up a brush and ran it through her hair — it seemed a good bit more grey than it had been in the morning — but something outside caught her attention; a commotion, the shuttering of windows, the opening of doors. She looked out to see just about the last thing she’d expected to see.

River and the Doctor trailed the Lady in White, following her carefully through the town. The Lady sure knew how to draw a crowd; everyone was watching her, waiting, a whole town holding its breath at once. 

River took a moment to wonder about the boarded-up shops. She reckoned they were used for something, once, but once everyone became comfortable in sameness, in the Lady’s sustaining, they had no need for markets. They had everything they’d ever need. Nothing more. Nothing less. River almost hated to think how hard they’d struggle; they were innocent, for the most part. Except for Dor. River had plans to choke her blue — the last person that had stabbed her hadn’t lived to watch her bleed. 

“River,” the Doctor nudged her. “You alright?” 

“Peachy,” she replied with a strained smile. “Currently thinking about how good it’s going to feel to wring Dor’s fat old neck.” 

“Focus, please,” he urged her. “The Lady is free for the first time in god knows how long -- no pun intended — and we have no idea what she’s going to do.” 

“She saved my life,” River reminded him. “I trust her.” 

“Yes,” agreed the Doctor. “She saved you, but you weren’t responsible for her eon of torment. You want revenge against Dor because she hurt you — and yes, I do, too — but imagine if you were her. The Lady, I mean. Wouldn’t you want revenge against all these people?” 

River thought for a moment. “I don’t think she’s vengeful.” She didn’t think the Doctor was, either, but part of her knew how he could be. When something he loved was threatened. When something he cared for was hurt. There was a darkness to him. There was a darkness in everyone, she figured, but the Doctor’s seemed particularly bleak. He looked livid, now. River couldn’t tell if it was fear or attraction she felt when she stared him down. More often than not, it was a mix of both.

The Lady paused, and River nearly walked into the Doctor. He steadied her, his hand finding hers, and they waited. Everyone waited. It was like a scene in one of those old American Western films, where two ruddy cowboys got ready to face off in a duel only one would walk away from. All that was missing was a tumbleweed and a horse or two.

In one doorway, River spotted the little girl who the Doctor had comforted in the church. Something in her stomach started to hurt, and she had the feeling it had nothing to do with her all-but-forgotten injury. She was nervous. She was scared. 

“Do you think they’ve all stopped drinking the water?” River whispered to the Doctor. He shrugged.

“I certainly hope so.” 

“What the hell is this!?” Dor was fast approaching, the only thing moving in the city. “You’re supposed to be dead and gone!” 

River flashed her a lethal smile. “It’s sweet, really, that you think you could kill me. I’ve been trailed across the universe by monsters you couldn’t fathom.” 

Dor lunged at her again, and River prepared herself for a brawl, but the Lady raised her hand up and Dor froze. Everything froze. The wind stopped blowing, and no watching eye seemed to blink. The Lady held reality in the palm of her hand, keeping it in stasis, safe and secure. She turned to River — who, startled, found that she could still move. The Doctor was frozen at her side.

“What are you doing?” she asked the Lady. “How--” 

And then she was struck by a telepathic circuit so strong it knocked her off her feet, and she tumbled down onto the dusty dirt road, holding her head in her hands. It felt heavy with the Lady’s presence, like a knowledge-based congestion, and suddenly, she found that she knew. She knew so very much! She knew all about the Lady, as if she always had, and she knew all about the Eorno people, things that no one had ever known before. The only thing she didn’t know about the Lady was why she went along with the sacrifices for so long, even if she didn’t want to. River reckoned it was because the Lady didn’t know why herself.

_Stories are how we tell each other the truth_ , the Lady thought, and River rather liked that. She made a mental note to use it someday, when the time was right.

There, in her mind, amid the stories, she found the truth folded up and tucked neatly away. She knew what the Lady was going to do, and she knew how. 

The Eornos were a powerful telepathic race who existed at the very start of the universe; legend has it that they were born of its same stardust, cut from the same shade of night. They communicated telepathically and empathetically — with emotional impulses — and they held within them the unprecedented power to manipulate reality. They could’ve used it to start wars, except when they lived, there was no one else around to fight with. They could’ve used it to end worlds, except they’d never want to, because they were perfectly content to coexist. A peaceful people, albeit a quiet one. 

Time Lords came not long after the capital-S start, but unlike the Eornos, they fancied themselves rulers early on, in the days before Rassilon, before the Great War. They were hunters of species deemed dangerous, self-purported heroes playing the part of gods. And when they saw the mighty power of the Eornos, they believed it was too much power for any one creature to have. 

River and the Doctor had almost been right; the Time Lords had exploited the Lady in the name of science, but they did so to determine whether or not the rest of the Eornos ought to be allowed to live; how she responded to the colony, how she behaved alongside a new and inferior species...and she had been kind. 

Time Lords never anticipated kindness among Others. Plans were already in place to burn out the star heating their world, to transfer the experiment of Watertown to the Canis Major Overdensity, and to call the whole thing a daunting failure. What do Time Lords do when they’re wrong? They cover it up. They hide it away. They never talk about it again.

The Lady had blamed them dearly, but she didn’t blame the settlers. Even now, she didn’t fault them for their ignorance. It was systemic and inherited, she thought. It was a terrible gift passed down from generation to generation. And so she planned to undo it all, to write Watertown out of history. 

River saw the blueprints for the plan in her head. All of the people taken would be returned to their lives with no memory of ever coming. The particularly astute might see the church’s towering steeple in their dreams, or sense the soft motion of a bus bound for nowhere when they teetered on the cusp of sleep and wake. 

All of the dead would be revived, returned to their times and places and people, feeling only the slightest bit sick when they woke up at home. They’d think they just had a very, very bad dream, or had fallen into a very, very deep sleep.

All of Watertown’s original inhabitants would be scattered about the universe, new memories put in their minds — and the minds of those around them — to offer them a chance to do better, to do things for themselves, to choose. 

Some may find themselves suddenly teaching a subject to primary school students that they’ve always sort of liked, but suddenly know a great deal about, and they and their fellow instructors would all swear they’ve been there for years. Alumni of decades past would name them as the favourite teachers to date.

Others who had an affinity for cooking may find themselves manning the kitchen at a five-star restaurant on a planet across the galaxy, with raving reviews dating back ages. Some may wake up in a small cottage, in some small fly-over town just south of the kind of place where stories usually happened; they’d smell honeysuckle in the quiet air, and they’d be happy.

Some may choose wrong. Some might steal, or lie, or hurt. Some might drink too much, smoke too much. Some might have their hearts broken, and others might break them. But that, the Lady had learned, is the beauty of it all. Choice. The freedom to fail. The freedom to try, try again. The freedom to change, always, constantly. To be impulsive. To be brave. To be selfless. To learn. To grow. 

River was stunned. She sat up, her trousers caked in dirt. 

“You can do all that?” she asked the Lady, dumbfounded. Of course she could. It shouldn’t be surprising, River mused, when the Lady had brought her back from the cusp of death, and sustained a town for centuries. It would take a lot of energy, but River knew an Eorno let out a splendid burst of energy upon their death; enough to remap history. Enough to do it all. But it would be the very last thing the Lady in White ever did.

“That’s...amazing. You’re granting them mercy. Forgiveness,” River could hardly believe they’d have a happy ending. “All they’ve ever done is hurt you.” 

_They loved me,_ the Lady thought. River laughed, incredulous. 

“Dor isn’t capable of loving anyone! Or anything! All she wants to do is kill other people so she can go on living forever! And Pan, too!”

Now Dor was a proper psychopath who made River look like Mother Theresa. She turned to face Dor’s frozen frame, circling her, inspecting her, hating her. Dor wasn’t brainwashed. Maybe she had been once, but when Pan had picked her as his suiter, he’d told her the truth; River believed how someone responded to terrible truths said a great deal more about them than the lies they told or the facades they kept up. Dor had her chance at redemption, and she’d blown it on a cheap shot at power. 

Some people were just bad, she assumed. Rotten to the core. Some people, like Dor and Pan and Kovarian and a slew of other devils River had encountered — they were just the badness that balanced out sunny vineyards and chirping birds and rolling waves. The cold and lonely night to offset warm and gentle days. The deep darkness to the guiding light. It was the natural order of things, that evil existed, and as she brought herself to look into Dor’s still, glassy eyes, she knew it was evil she saw reflecting back.

The Lady heard everything River thought — they were connected, after all. River felt a jolt of sympathy travel along the wire intertwining their minds. She wasn’t sure if it came from the part of her own brain that could be, at times, deeply human, or from the Lady’s, which was the farthest from human River had ever encountered. But nonetheless, it lingered like a fleeting touch. Sympathy. Mercy. Things River didn’t often feel, and when she did, she tried her best to pretend that she didn’t.

“I suppose you’re right. Sometimes a second chance isn’t enough. Sometimes, someone needs a third or a fourth to get it right,” River said after a pause. She turned her attention to the Doctor and frowned. “He’ll remember, though, won’t he? And I will? All the things we’ve learned, and seen, and done?” 

Affirmation. A silent nod. Yes, thought the Lady. When she was gone, the legacy of her people would vanish, too. But it would live in River’s mind, and as long as there’s someone there to remember you, you’re never really gone. 

She lifted her arms and a mighty wind blew. One by one, a pale glow surrounded the people of the city, and they began to vanish slowly, deliberately, carefully, inserted neatly back into their timelines like a coin in a slot. Some resumed their lives. Others started new ones that would fit like a glove. And once they had all gone, River felt the Doctor, reanimated from his stasis, reach out and take her hand. She turned to him with a smile as the Lady ascended into the sky, and together, they watched as she turned to dust halfway between the sun and the earth. 

The last thing River felt along the fast-fading telepathic link was a joy so profound it brought tears to her eyes once again.

“They’ll all be alright,” River said. The Doctor nodded; the Lady had shared her plan with him, too. He put his arm around River’s waist and pressed a kiss to her temple.

“Why are you crying, sweetie?” 

“I’m happy, I think,” she said, smiling faintly. “Almost no one died today. All those people in the rubbish tip, they’ll come back. It’ll be like they weren’t ever gone. Imagine all the grief that never was. All the loss that never happened. All the lives restored and fixed and improved, and no one will ever know that it’s all because a very old, very lonely, and very sad creature used her last bit of life to be kind. It was her sacrifice that gave them everything, and no one will ever know, Doctor.” 

“You’ll know,” the Doctor hugged her close, smiling. “And I know you’ll never let anyone forget it.” 

River nodded, her head on his chest. She looked up at him and smiled. The same glow that had transported the townspeople away had surrounded them both, and she felt her skin start to tingle.

“We’re going home, I suppose,” she hummed, taking a step back and inspecting her own gleaming hands. The flowers in the gardens had died, long-since wilted, and as the trees shed their final leaves, clouds gathered overhead. “We’re still on for our date tonight, eh?” 

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” the Doctor grinned. “Pick you up at seven?” 

River laughed. “Don’t be late!” 

Somewhere in South Yorkshire, circa 2010, a young mother called Nina awoke to the smell of coffee. Her pot was on a timer, and it meant it was nearly time to wake the children for school. She wouldn’t ever know why, but she hugged them just a bit harder that morning, and packed in their lunches an extra biscuit or two.

A retiree named Gladys had worked her whole life as a typist in New York. She opened her eyes to find that she’d nodded off in a beach chair by the pool at an all-inclusive resort in Miami, Florida. What a strange dream, she thought, though by the time she’d thought it, she already couldn’t remember what it had been about. What mattered was that she’d been saving for years to make the trip down south, and as she checked her watch, she grinned. Her friends would be arriving soon. Among them would be Georgie, a grey-haired old pilot who she and Sandy — her very best friend — thought might finally ask her on the date she’d been wanting for years. Maybe he’d take her to Disney World. The sun was out. Life, for Gladys, was good.

Har had been working in his shed in rural California, building a bird feeder. When he awoke there at his bench, he figured he must’ve fallen asleep, though oddly, he didn’t really remember putting his head down. Ah, well, he thought. That’s what happens when you stay up late watching those silly nighttime films. He strained to remember the plot of the one that had kept him up; there’d been a church, and a junkyard, and something about a pan, or a door. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. The birds were chirping, and their feeder wasn’t going to finish itself. 

The Doctor blinked, and suddenly he was standing on matted-down yellow grass, flanked by Amy and Rory and about ten thousand other spectators, all watching while Queen performed on stage.

“Hey!” Amy nudged him. “They’re playing my favourite song!” She grabbed Rory’s arm and gave it an excited shake. “I can’t believe we’re actually here! And they’re actually there! Right up on stage!”

_Who wants to live forever?_ sang Freddie Mercury, all moustache and sweat and white tank-top tee-shirt. _It's all decided for us. This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us. Who wants to live forever?_

“This _is_ cool, Doctor,” Rory grinned, sharing in Amy’s enthusiasm. “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, mate.” 

“Yes,” replied the Doctor, a brilliant smile forming at his lips. “I think we did.” 

Dr. Luna Akinjide-Okereke was talking on and on about dream analysis, about all the different thing nightmares could say about depression, anxiety, trauma, guilt — but her words got lost in River’s mental fizz. 

She’d gotten there so quickly, so easily, and it was like she’d never left. She was even wearing the prison yard greys she’d thought she’d left behind. Yet she’d been gone for days! She understood time travel well enough, but it was one thing to travel with a TARDIS or vortex manipulator. Blinking in and out of time, like magic, was something else entirely.

Remarkable, she thought. The things the Lady in White could do. Had done, rather. A pang of sorrow hit her square in the chest. She’d never really lost someone before; you had to get close enough to someone to care when they’d gone, and River did her very best never to do that. Victory suddenly felt a little less sweet. 

“You know,” she interrupted, though she hadn’t meant to. “I’m actually feeling better about the nightmares, now. Now that I’ve thought about them enough, they don’t seem too scary.” 

She’d faced her nightmares in that little chamber; she’d faced Kovarian, and the Lady, and she’d faced herself, too. She’s taken a knife to the gut — her stomach lurched a bit at the thought — and she’d walked away. With a life like that, it’s no wonder she sometimes fancied herself indestructible.

“Oh?” Luna seemed pleasantly surprised. 

“Yes, I mean…” River laughed awkwardly. “You told me to think about what nightmares represent to me, and I've thought about it a great deal. Just while I’ve been sitting here, of course. It’s not like I’ve gone anywhere!” 

“Oh, of course,” Luna chuckled and sipped her wine. Something about the way she was looking at River led her to believe she knew a great deal more than she’d ever let on. Maybe she was time sensitive, River speculated. Maybe she could sense temporal fluctuations. Or maybe she was just...clever. “Are you going to tell me what you’ve realised, or do I have to guess?” Luna teased, shaking River back down to reality.

“Right,” she let out a short laugh. “You see, I think I’ve realised that nightmares are only frightening because we can’t control them, and there’s nothing more frightening than having no choice whatsoever in the things that happen to you.” 

Luna nodded, thoughtful. 

“And what’s more,” River went on. “We don’t always get choices in real life, either. About the things that happen to us, I mean, but we do get to choose what we do next.” 

She looked around at the stone walls, the windows with bars blocking the sun. Prison had happened to her, and she hadn’t gotten the slightest say in it whatsoever. Kovarian happened to her. The SIlence happened to her. Everything bad always seemed to happen to her. 

But it had all happened to the Lady, too, and as a result, the Lady had done awful things. But in the final hour, she’d done right by the innocent people she’d wronged, and gave mercy to those who had wronged her. Goodness in extremis, River thought. Without hope, without gain, without reward. Goodness for goodness’ sake. There was a time in her life where River would’ve thought the Lady was a fool for it, but if she’d learned anything about the universe, it was bitterness was the real fool’s gold.

Luna smiled. “You’re quiet, and that’s rare.” 

“I’m thinking,” River laughed. 

“What about?” 

“Lots of things,” she told her. “Right now, about an old friend I’ve lost.” 

Luna frowned. “Was this a good friend?” 

“Oh, the very best,” River chuckled. “She died saving others.”

“Well,” said Luna, sitting up straight. “No one is ever really gone, as long as there’s someone there to remember them.” 

River nod was fond, albeit sad. “My old friend told me that, too.” 

Luna’s smile felt familiar. “I thought she might’ve.” 

She noticed something about Luna she hadn’t ever noticed before; an old floral inlay along the hem of her white button-down shirt, cross-stitch flowers sewn into ivory silk. It was familiar, though she couldn’t place it. Something she’d seen, or dreamt of, or known a long while back, but she couldn’t quite remember — a phrase on the tip of her tongue, a thought at the front of her mind, but every time she got close to it, it darted just out of reach. She somehow knew the entire history of the Eorno people, like she’d memorised it for a lecture. But it was like someone had taken certain specific bits out of her mind, leaving a hole in the shape of a memory’s vague outline. She could almost trace it along its edges and deduce what had once been there, but almost only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades.

And Watertown suddenly felt very far away.

She didn’t have time to give it much thought; a loud siren blared and the doors to Luna’s office began to part. 

“Must be time for me to go back to my cage,” River remarked, put out. She downed the last of her wine in one grateful swig. “Thank you. For everything.” 

She felt a fondness for Luna that hadn’t been there before, and while she didn’t know why, she appreciated it nonetheless. She was tired — exhausted, really. She hadn’t slept in days, and she’d been through quite the ordeal. She always felt affectionate when she was tired. The Doctor called her cuddly once and only once; he’d learned better when she’d smacked him upside the head. (And then, she’d fallen asleep with her head on his chest, and when she woke up tangled in his arms, nestled into the crook of his neck, he’d looked rather smug.) And so she thought nothing of the way some sleepy part of her felt as though she knew Luna better than she had when she’d walked into her office that morning. Instead, she thought about how she was rather looking forward to being tucked back into her cell, where she’d sleep off the remainder of the morning until the Doctor came that night.

“Until next time, Dr. Song,” Luna bid her farewell as the guards came in and cuffed her. “Be kind to yourself.” 

Touched, River smiled. “I will be.” 

As she was on her way out, a flicker of some distant knowledge came back to her, and she was sure that one final look at Luna would be the key to unlocking what she’d known. Something about the Eornos and stardust and reincarnation. But by the time she glanced back over her shoulder, the metal doors had slid shut, and the first of a pair of guards gave her a rough yank forward. The fleck of realisation had gone, and reality came inching back, grey walls, dull lights, barred windows, and all.

“Eyes ahead, Miss Song,” he grunted. 

“Professor Song,” River pouted. It had been a terrible adventure to Watertown — one that had almost cost her her sanity, and then her life — but strangely, she missed it. She missed the sun. She missed the thrill. She missed the Doctor. 

“If you wanted to be called professor,” snickered the second guard. “You shouldn’t have thrown your life away on a murder charge.” 

“Was it worth it?” teased the first, giving her a shove back into her cell.

As the bars closed her in, she held onto them, staring out at their miserable grins with a look that would’ve dropped them dead, if looks could kill. 

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “It was.” Her eyes flickered down to the first guard’s right hand; he was missing a finger. He caught her staring, and he tucked his hand quickly into his pocket.

“Was it worth it?” she mocked him, grinning. Without another word, the second guard ushered his pal away, and River was alone on the isolated wing they reserved for her. 

With a proud little smile, she sat cross-legged on her bed and pulled her diary out from under her pillow. She always wrote before going to bed — sometimes, she wrote up until the very moment she fell asleep, and when she woke up, she’d laugh at the way the curve of her handwriting trailed off the page. It was the little things, she thought. 

After the day she’d had, she certainly had a lot to write about.


	14. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A patient foe is ready to strike. Who is the Watcher? Why does he want the Doctor dead? And how exactly does an imprisoned archaeologist from the future fit into his grand plan?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for reading!! i know this one has been long and weird, but there's just one more part to the story! stay tuned xo

It was called “A Brief and Personal History of the Extinct Eornos,” and it was the first actual book River Song planned on writing. It was drafted out in the back pages of her diary, complete with detailed illustrations (and a distracted doodle of the Doctor, standing in the moonlight, a serious look on his boyish face). 

She’d always secretly wanted to be an author, though she sort of reckoned she’d write romance stories or noir mysteries. But in retrospect, that was all rather droll. Anyone could write a story about the tragedy of love or a horrors of the unknown, but only she could write about the Eornos. Only she knew the lore, the history, the ancient beliefs — and the story of the Eornos had its fair share of tragedy, love, horror, and unknown, too. 

It would be quite the story, she thought. Fellow archaeologists would wonder how she knew what she knew — and how she penned her magnum opus from prison — but when they checked her information against half-complete patches of historical knowledge, they’d learn that she was right. They’d think she was brilliant. A genius. She’d be well-regarded as a scholar, but more importantly, no one would ever forget the Lady in White, and between the dog-eared pages of textbooks and articles, the Eornos would live forever. 

She wondered how long until the Doctor would arrive. She hoped he’d take her to dinner; the guards hadn’t taken too kindly to her teasing remarks, and when she’d received her steel tray of prison food, the bread was moldy, and the meat was caked in rot. 

“You’ll bite into a human finger,” the guard had taunted her. “But you won’t bite into that? Pity that a skinny thing like you ought to go hungry.” 

She’d made a mental note to bite him again, if he ever got close enough.

It was raining outside, but she’d learned how to tell time by the direction of the storm. It never changed, and so she knew it was around 6 p.m. when the wind blew so hard it shook her glass behind her barred windows. It had frightened her, at first, but now, it was like clockwork; it marked an hour until the Doctor would arrive. She’d almost come to like the sound. 

She felt something change. She didn’t know what it was; it was subtle and it was different, as if the temperature had dropped a degree or so and reality shifted every-so-slightly to the left. It was odd enough to draw her attention up from her diary. 

“Temporal flux,” she muttered to herself. “Now that’s curious.” 

Not even the TARDIS caused it. No, it was too refined. Too controlled. It was meant for time travel. Sometimes, a particularly finicky vortex manipulator could cause a minor shift, but it would take something the size of a spaceship, hard-wired to time hop through a reluctant vortex, to cause the strangeness River felt.

Before she could give it too much thought, a searing pain split her temple, and her hands reflexively came up to press against the ache. This again! She cursed. She was beginning to forget what it felt like not to have a headache. 

“Hello, Miss Song,” came a voice she didn’t recognise. Eyes wide, she looked around her cell, out into the hall, hoping almost desperately that she saw someone there. Because the alternative was that there was no one there at all, and that was much scarier a thought than any of the guards in the prison.

“ _Professor_ Song, if you don’t mind,” she muttered, because she didn’t know what else to say. “Who are you?” 

“Clever girl,” the voice chuckled. Male, she thought. Sounded young, but in the same way the Doctor sounded young. There was a timelessness to his voice, an ancient grief. “But not clever enough. You haven’t pieced it together yet?”

“Eh?” River enquired. 

“That tingle against the back of your neck, the eyes peering back at you from the shadows, the strange feeling that you’re being watched, even when you’re alone?” the man laughed. River covered her ears, laying down on her bed. She could still hear him laughing; his voice was in her head, so loud she could feel it in her jaw, in the pit of her stomach. Was it madness, she wondered? Panic settled as a lump in her throat. 

“I am the thing you think you see in the corner of your eye when you know that nothing’s there, but believe it’s possible that something just might be lurking after all,” the man told her, voice no more than a whisper yet still, it was somehow the loudest sound she'd ever heard. She imagined him leaning in close, the stink of his breath all too obvious. He was so real. 

When River squeezed her eyes shut, she suddenly saw him; a blonde young man, with wisps of messy curls slopped onto his head. His clothes were alien and utilitarian, all black, with a crossbody sling holding more weapons than River had could've anticipated: Time guns that weaponised the vortex; they could send people back through the centuries with the pull of a trigger, like a Weeping Angel locked and loaded in a holster at the hip. A de-mat firearm, which could remove its victim from reality altogether. A cosmic tripwire — pull it, and your existence is accelerated so quickly you promptly turn to dust. A teleportation ray, with the power to snatch someone up and beam them someplace else in a fraction of a second.

River’s heart was in her throat. These were Time Lord weapons. 

“Who are you?” she asked him. She saw herself take a step forward, though she knew she hadn’t actually moved. She was watching herself, like an outside observer, a viewer watching telly. It took her a terrible, confused moment to deduce that they were meeting within his mind; he must’ve been a telepath, too. A strong one. Much stronger than she was, and far more controlled. That was never a good sign.

“The Watcher,” he grinned. “And I’ve been watching you for a very long while, Miss Song. Verath, the Bluewood Forest, Watertown...but I’m not interested in you. It’s the Doctor I want. Fortunately, your messy telepathy has given me the perfect peephole into his life.” 

Typical, River thought. She was always getting caught up in his rows. 

“You’re a Time Lord,” she stated. 

“What gave it away?” he toyed with his artillery sash. 

“The arrogance,” River remarked. He frowned.

"Awfully cheeky for a girl living in a bad dream." 

“The Doctor told me about a creature called the Watcher," River went on, ignoring his remark. "A strange and spectral old thing that merged with him when he was young, or something. It was sort of an omen on Logopolis. Foreshadowed his death.” 

The Watcher grinned. “So goes the old fable,” he snickered. “A Gallifreyan tall tale. The Watcher — a silent observer, a sign of dying."

“You’re him, then?” River took a step back. He shook his head.

“The Doctor isn’t a real doctor, is he? He only chose the name because it’s what he aspires to be. And I aspire to be like that old Watcher — I hope to foreshadow his death.” 

“I’ll stop you,” she told him firmly, without a doubt.

“Oh, you’ll try. I know all about you, Miss Song--” 

“Professor,” she hissed. 

“Why does that matter to you so very much? Is it the power? The detachment from femininity? The false sense of self-identity?” he stepped toward her, reaching out and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She yanked herself away from him, moving to strike him, but right when her fist should’ve collided with his nose, he was suddenly standing behind her, laughing. She turned, stunned.

“This is my mind,” he reminded her. “My rules. That’s what you said to him, wasn’t it? Little do you know, your unwillingness to restrain yourself has given me almost all the information I need to mobilise my small but mighty army.” 

“You don’t have an army,” River snorted, sure she was calling his bluff. But when a handful of familiar enemies stepped out from absolutely nothingness, she felt the colour drain from her face. 

Faj, the Verathian general, with his woody face holding a steely smile and treelike hands offering up a wave meant to taunt her. Tom, from Bluewood Manor, grinning in a way that made her sick. Pan and Dor, hand-in-hand, stone-faced and vengeful.

Adequately intimidated, River turned to the Watcher.

“No!” she growled. “You can’t do this. It isn’t possible.” 

“Everything is possible,” he cupped her cheek, and when she tried to pull away, she found that she was frozen. His mind, his rules. Suddenly, she was properly scared. 

“I’m going to kill your husband,” he whispered. “And you’re going to give me all the information I need to do it.” 

With a shaky breath, she tried to shake her head, but she still couldn’t move an inch.

“You’ll have to get rid of me first, before I’ll ever let you hurt him,” she threatened through grit teeth. “And I think all your friends here will agree that I’m infamously hard to kill.” 

“So are cockroaches,” the Watcher laughed. “But they’re nothing special. And neither are you. But you are...predisposed to mental conditioning, aren’t you?” 

River was silent. Her lip trembled. She really didn’t like where this was going.

“If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll take it from you,” he tilted her chin up to look at him, and she wished she could’ve said she saw pure evil in his eyes. But the truth was that she saw nothing at all. Somehow, that was worse. “You act like you’re tougher than diamond, love, but oh, you’re so fragile, aren’t you?” 

River couldn’t strike him, but she could spit in his face — and that’s exactly what she did. 

His menacing smile gave way to a hateful grimace. He wrapped his hand around River’s throat and choked her up against the wall, lifting her off her feet. She struggled against him, but she was stuck, as still as a statue, helpless against his grip. 

“Fragile,” he repeated. “Because once you break a pretty little vase, you can put it back together, but it’s never quite the same, is it? The scars of its cracks can be smoothed over with gold, sealed with wax, or sanded down to nothing, but the vase never quite feels whole again, does it?” he squeezed, and River gagged, tears prickling in her eyes. “It always remembers how easily it was broken. How easy it would be to break it again, because it knows it’s fragile. Just a little bump off its pedestal, and down it tumbles.”

She wanted to kill him. Oh, she wanted to rip him limb from limb and make him scream for mercy, beg for death. The only thing keeping her grounded was the mental image of making him hurt. 

“Focus on my voice,” he whispered, his face so close to hers she could feel the heat of his breath against her throat. She hated him. Oh, she hated him. “Hear me. I’m in your head. Of course it’s possible to put thoughts in someone else’s mind; that’s what conditioning is, isn’t it? Is that what Kovarian did to you?” 

“Stop it,” River croaked. 

“Oh, no, no,” he clicked his teeth. “You think it’s a marvelous idea to tell me where I’ll find the Doctor next, don’t you?” 

Tearfully, River shook her head. She could feel herself slipping. It was true; her mind had been broken once, and as he poked and prodded around in there trying to influence her, she could feel herself being swayed. She fought against it harder than she’d ever fought against anything before. 

“No,” she gasped. “I won’t.” 

“Poor pet,” he sighed, feigning pity. “I can see how scared you are. Oh, you’re always scared. I can make you feel at ease. I can make you feel calm. Listen to my voice.” 

He was so, so hypnotic. He was like a soft rain on a window in the night, an aged pendulum rocking back and fourth, back and fourth... 

By the time River had the clarity of mind to remember how much she hated him, she’d slipped into a state that felt almost like sleep, and she found it impossible to hate anything at all. So relaxed. So calm. His grasp on her throat loosened. 

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he soothed. “Now tell me where to find the Doctor.” 

“He comes by,” she heard herself say. 

No! Shut up! She fought against herself, but she couldn’t control her own words. 

“Comes by your cell, does he?” 

River nodded. The part of her that knew what she was doing and couldn’t stop it had started to cry — tears of mingled rage and guilt.

“Now tell me this,” he gave her cheek a condescending pat. “The most vital parts of his timeline, where the temporal threads are loose...where are they, hm?” 

Like Silencio, she thought. She hadn’t realised she’d said it aloud until it was too late. 

“Yes, good,” praised the Watcher. “Lake Silencio. You were there. Oh, you were scared, weren’t you?” 

River felt herself nod. 

Damn it! She cursed herself. She was losing a battle in which she was the only fighter; and she was losing badly. 

“That’s why you’re in prison, isn’t it? Killing him? But he isn’t dead,” he pouted. “Now that’s not fair. You sit there, terrorised by cruel guards, starved and beaten, while he roams the universe with your parents, who don’t even love you enough to visit? No, no, to them you're just a bad dream. A reminder of something they almost had, yet never will.” 

You’re wrong, River wanted to say. They love me. But instead, she felt herself nodding again. 

“Poor old River Song,” he frowned. “Alone. Abandoned. Afraid. I’ll help you. I won’t ever abandon you.” 

“Go to hell,” she choked out in a moment of lucidity. He struck her cheek, open-palmed and arrogant. She heard herself cry out, but by the time she was aware of what had happened, the sting had faded. 

“Tell me about Trenzalore?” 

Spoilers, River thought. 

“I don’t know,” she sniffled. “Stop it.” 

“What about Manhattan?” 

River shook her head again. “I don't know. It's...back-to-front, that's the trouble."

She heard someone crying. Was it her? She couldn’t tell.

"No trouble at all," he soothed.

“Why do you want to hurt him?” she pleaded. “He’s proper and good! He saves people!” 

“He kills people,” the Watcher snarled. “Has he told you about his children? How he murdered them — along with the rest of Gallifrey — in the Time War?” 

“Liar,” River accused. “They died when they were small, long before the war.” 

“For Time Lords, there is no before and after,” the Watcher told her coldly. “He destroyed the planet, wiped it from time. His children weren’t killed in a bombing, no, that’s just what he tells people. What he tells himself. They were wiped from reality before they were ever even born.” 

“No!” River shouted. “You’re lying!” 

“Am I?” he stroked her cheek. “Among the people he killed were my own children. My wife. A billion other peoples’ children and wives. Don’t you think he has to pay for playing god?” 

He had to do it, River meant to say. It was unavoidable. It was necessary. She believed that, up until the exact moment she felt the Watcher force her to nod.

“Easy now, love. You’re getting all worked up. One last question. A very, very important question.” He paused, prodding around in River’s mind and settling the parts of it that had started to churn. She was hypnotised under his touch, taken away from herself, out of her own mind, out of her own body. “What is the Doctor’s name? I know you know. Most Time Lords don’t even know. What's so special about you, hm?”

River winced as he tightened his grip on her throat once again. 

"Nothing special at all," she managed.

"Maybe not to me. Maybe not to the rest of the universe. But to the Doctor?" He laughed. "Oh, to the Doctor, you're somebody. Not anybody. Not just anybody. Not _just_ anything. How cross do you think he'll be when he learns that you've betrayed him?" 

No, River thought. It was the oldest and most deadly question in the universe: Doctor Who? She wouldn't tell him. She couldn't. 

Except she could. And she would. She didn't have a choice.

She felt her mouth moving, though she tried to keep it shut. She felt herself telling him everything at the very same time she was biting her lip until she tasted blood to keep herself quiet. There was one of her in her cell, and one of her in the Watcher’s mind, and that transcendental version, whose own mind had been cracked wide open, spoke aloud the name of the Doctor. The true name. The deadly name. The name from capital-B Before. It was a secret password to tombs around the universe, a temporal key to unlocking things that ought to remain forever shut. And she’d just given the Watcher the lockpick he needed to break-and-enter into a string of closed realities, releasing more horrors upon the universe than she could ever even begin to count.

When she opened her eyes, she was laying on her bed in her cell, drenched in a cold sweat. The rain had picked up outside her window, and a flash of lightning cast a quick ivory glow that reached out into the empty corridor. She swore she heard the fading horror of the Watcher’s sick laugh fade with the distant thunder. 

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, no, no.

She leapt to her feet with a startled gasp and began to pace, flexing her fingers and cracking her knuckles, just to remind herself that she could move again. There’s nothing worse than being frozen, being helpless, being unable to control your own body and mind. She’d felt that way once before, when she was strapped into a spacesuit under Lake Silencio, under exactly 3,913,010,672,301 gallons of water — and each gallon weighed, as the Americans back in Utah would say, 8.33 pounds. She did the math in her head every time she needed something to distract her: The weight of the world was, it seemed, 3.2595379e+13 pounds. She loved maths. She was good at maths. She was clever. 

But it didn’t matter how clever she was. Like the suit under the lake, the Watcher had moved for her, and thought for her, and acted for her. She felt nauseous at the thought. Violated. Claustrophobic. Her cell suddenly felt much too small, her skin too tight, her clothes restrictive. She unzipped the collar of her jumpsuit and leaned her head against the cool wall. Oh, she felt terrible.

There was nothing worse.

Well, there was one thing worse, and it was telling a strange and seemingly sociopathic renegade the most dangerous secret in the universe. 

Oh, no. 

She punched the wall and let out a frustrated shout, knocking the contents of her bed to the floor and flinging the abandoned tray of rotten food hard against the bars.

Winded, she paused to stare into the grimy, cracked mirror plastered below the window. She stared at herself, into her own wide eyes, examining the expression on her face and doing her best to make sure it matched what she actually felt. Fear? Panic? Guilt? Yes, that seemed right. She was herself again, alone in her mind, uninfluenced and free from the Watcher’s hypnotic conditioning. But she’d already caused the damage. It was too late. She hadn’t been strong enough. 

“Oh, Professor,” she whispered, pressing her hand against the glass and touching the tears on her reflection’s cheek. “What have you done?”


End file.
